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mrtdg
Inspiring
July 9, 2026
Question

Why does After Effects drop the leading zeros when using increment and save

  • July 9, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 16 views

I use AE on a few different client machines as well as my own. On ONLY one of those client machines,  every time I use “Increment and Save” the new file drops the leading zeros in the version number.

For example MyProject_v001.aep increments to MyProject_v2

If I “SaveAs” MyProject_v002 and repeat “Increment and Save” the new project is MyProject_v2.

All of these machines are on Version 26.3.0. My first thought was there’s a new setting (since it’s never done this in 20 years of using AE). I checked nothing I could see.

Any ideas? Not critical but frustrating.

Thank you

    2 replies

    Warren Heaton
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    July 12, 2026

    Hi ​@mrtdg:

    Which OS is this happening with?

    I tried to reproduce this and increment and save is working as expected for project file names that have padding.

    System info
        Application: After Effects v26.3.0.87
        OS: macOS v15.7.4, RAM: 128.00 GB GB, CPUs (logical): 16

    As a troubleshooting step, what happens if you run After Effects in Safe Mode?  I’d also check for any special characters in the file name and the file path and try removing those.  

    And yeah, this is frustrating.

     

     - Warren

    Community Manager
    July 10, 2026

    Hi,

    Thanks for the post. That doesn't sound very normal. Let me ask around a bit. Sorry for the frustration.


    Cheers,

    Kevin