Tree got deleted when I changed views

I'm new to this site. Yesterday I spent about 2 hours building out the family tree view (portrait) back to the 1000s/1100s (only my direct ancestry through each set of parents, not all cousins and siblings of everyone). I accidentally clicked on a different view and everything vanished. When I went back to portrait view, it took me back only to my great-grandparents on each side.
Is there a way to save the expanded tree view so that it doesn't get deleted if I accidentally click on a different page or leave the page and come back?
Additionally, is there a shortcut way to view the full pedigree without manually clicking the up arrow (^) on each person to automatically expand it back as far as there's a record? Yesterday I got to the "Add mother/father" grey boxes for a lot of the family, but apparently there are records of my ancestors that keep going really far back. I'm curious how far back it goes but would love a quicker way to move the process along. Thank you!
Answers
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Nothing "got deleted", as I think you realize: it's just that the portrait view reverted to its defaults, annoyingly losing all of your work in clicking all of those arrows.
Since you were only looking for direct ancestors, I suggest you try the fan chart instead of the portrait view. It can be set to show seven generations, so you can quickly get back to the fictional parts of the collaborative Tree.
(In most places, anything before about 1600 is supposition at best, and likely to be pure fiction. But it can be fun to explore, and to tell your family that "hey, look, we're descended from Beowulf!" <grin>.)
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Another suggestion that has been made many times on this forum is to bookmark any page that you feel you might wish to get back to in future, or simply fear "losing". I'd create a bookmark folder named "Family Tree Pages" and add any such pages (pedigree or individual profiles) into that folder. Of course, if you are in the habit of using more than one browser (say Firefox and Chrome) you will have to remember under which one the folder resides!
Personally, I now have Firefox set so it does not delete cookies / clear the cache overnight (or when I close the browser). That way, I can go to "History" and click on "Restore Previous Session", so that all the pages (tabs) I was working on previously are displayed the next day. I believe there is an alternative of automatically causing this to happen - my son set this up for me to work in Chrome, but I have forgotten the steps!
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