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I
imiplaceda
Participant
November 20, 2025
Question

Can’t open After effects project

  • November 20, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 50 views

About two days ago I was working on an edit in After Effects 2020. I opened Google to look for an image and suddenly both After Effects and Google crashed (at least I think both did — I’m not 100% sure). I didn’t panic because crashes happen sometimes, but after that, AE wouldn’t let me reopen my project.

 

I thought my laptop might’ve overheated because the fans were going crazy, so I let it cool down. The next day, I opened After Effects again — it worked fine at first. But when I tried to open my project, it just wouldn’t load. What’s weird is that I can make new projects and open them with no issues, but my older projects won't open anymore, except I've tried opening a project I've made in August and that worked but the one that I need doesn't open

 

I’ve tried everything I could think of:

• Resetting my AE preferences (like six times)

• Restarting my laptop

• Updating my system

• Basically every fix I found online

 

Nothing works. I’ve never had this issue before and I have no idea what happened. If anyone knows how to fix this, please help.

1 reply

nishu_kush
Community Manager
nishu_kushCommunity Manager
Community Manager
November 20, 2025

Hi imiplaceda, sorry to hear about the issue.

 

It's possible that your project file got corrupted. Can you try importing your project into a new blank project instead of opening it? Also, are you able to open projects from the Auto Save folder? If nothing helps, please share the project file so I can give it a try. However, I can't guarantee a fix.

Feel free to share the project via DM if you prefer not to share it publicly. Moving this thread from Bugs to Discussions for troubleshooting.


Thanks,
Nishu

I
imiplacedaAuthor
Participant
November 20, 2025

Hi! Before I reached out to the Adobe Community, I asked ChatGPT for advice on how to fix this. I tried importing my project into a new blank project, but it still shows the same issue — it loads and “imports” something, but it ends up with zero items. I also tried saving it under a different name, but nothing changed. Also I'll dm you the link to my project file!

nishu_kush
Community Manager
nishu_kushCommunity Manager
Community Manager
November 20, 2025

Thanks for getting back and sharing the file. I was able to open the file on my end in After Effects version 25.6. I've re-saved the file and shared it via DM. However, you'll need to install the latest version of After Effects to open that file.

Note: You can keep After Effects 2020 and install the latest version. If you remove version 2020, you won't be able to reinstall it.

Let me know how it goes.


Thanks,
Nishu

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