Comment 1 for bug 191466

Did you try "bzr revert missing_file"? I believe "svn revert missing_file" also works when using Subversion, so I'd expect svn people to know to try that.

"bzr update" doesn't operate on single files. It applies any missing changes from the branch to your working tree, while preserving as much as possible any changes you've made locally.

I think "bzr update missing_file" could give a less misleading message, but the behaviour is by design. Probably this bug should be marked invalid.