Dealing with project files

QGIS project files are human-readable XML files with the filename ending with .qgs. You can open them in any text editor (such as Notepad++ on Windows or gedit on Ubuntu) and read or even change the file contents.

When you save a project file, you will notice that QGIS creates a second file with the same name and a .qgs~ ending, as shown in the next screenshot. This is a simple backup copy of the project file with identical content. If your project file gets corrupted for any reason, you can simply copy the backup file, remove the ~ from the file ending, and continue working from there.

Dealing with project files

By default, QGIS stores the relative ...

Get Learning QGIS - Third Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.