Troubleshooting

GitHub is great, and evolving fast, but it still gets confused now and then. In particular, when reverting it is quite easy to get conflicts even if you're the only person using the repo.

If you get a conflict, the first thing to do is copy the file somewhere outside the repo using Windows Explorer/File Finder. If you'd got it open in a text editor, save that copy somewhere as well. That way you've got at least one copy you're happy is reasonably up to date. Open the file you're working on in the repo again and save it; this sometimes helps.

If that doesn't sort things, backup the whole directory and then remove it from GitHub Desktop (right-click the repo name --> Remove). Re-clone it from GitHub, copying back in any files you are happy with, and then committing/pushing.

If you definitely need an older copy on your machine, you can try to edit the commit sequence with rebase.

Finally, worse comes to the worse, you can manually copy and paste changes from the GitHub commit pages, which list each change between commits.

Remember, you should always back up your files independent of GitHub; GitHub is a great way to back stuff up, but nothing is inviolable: you should have a separate back up scheme, in these days of ransomeware preferably based on formal backup rotation models, such as the Child-Parent-Grandparent model.