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Eatboxman
Participant
January 26, 2017
Answered

Corrupted .fla File, help

  • January 26, 2017
  • 4 replies
  • 16411 views

Hi!
Was wondering if anyone would be willing to try to un-corrupt my fla file. I tried myself and kinda failed so I got desperate and made this topic.
If it can't be fixed then no worries, I'll just.... Drink a lot of energy drinks...
Here's the file: http://www.mediafire.com/file/5s4zln45dsblmo1/TheAnimeManAnimation.fla

It still has a lot of kilobytes so I figured I could somehow just be able to save the drawings so I don't have to redraw... a lot..
I don't really have any symbols or anything. Just the drawings.

I learned my lesson by the way.. Forever making multiple copies and backing up.. I know, I know..
Also no, I do not have a swf file I've been using Animate CC

Thanks for reading!

Correct answer kglad

you're doomed as far as i can see.  i couldn't fix that with winrar, ziptofix, yodot rar repair or remo repair rar.

the best you can do, is to prevent that from happening in the future.

to prevent that, each save should have a different name.  eg, if i have a project called farm_aid, i save as farm_aid_v000.fla, farm_aid_v001.fla, farm_aid_v002 etc.

i created a jsfl file, added it to my commands directory and created a shortcut, so after naming the first save as farm_aid.fla, the _vxyz is automatically appended when using my shortcut (ctrl-shift-s, in my case).   (if you're interested, i'll supply that jsfl file and walk you through the steps to use it.)

also, save often.  a typical project for me will have several hundred versions.  i periodically delete the oldest ones and only save the last 10 or 20 in case i need to return to an older version.

also, all my code is in class files and i've never had one get corrupted.  if i'm about to make a major change in a class file and i don't want to risk losing the older class file, i'll save it as ClassNameBU.as so i have a backup.

4 replies

John Hepworth
John Hepworth
Inspiring
August 13, 2025

in 2025 I saved a corrupted .fla by doing this

 

https://community.adobe.com/t5/animate-discussions/repairing-corrupted-fla-file-and-or-converting-swf-to-mpeg/m-p/15457902#M382900

G
guillermob98802400
Participant
September 15, 2023

so, if anyone has the same problems as i did, years later, and couldn't do the rar thing:

 

My file didn't open.

it crashed the program, and it just stayed there, infinitely loading. 

 

I tried the rar approach, and it didn't work. It told me it couldn't open it. I was having issues because i was using WinZip instead of WinRar. It SHOULD open with winrar.

 

There i tried to repair it. Repairing it as "rar" didn't work, so i repaired it as zip.

That... also didn't work. The program still crashed. But it got me halfway there.

 

Apparently, my true problem was that i had a corrupt, or overly big, or something, drawing that casued Animate to crash while loading the scene. So i had to erase the layer, but i couldn't while outside the program.

Except you can!

 

If you go inside the .rar, you can see the file DOMDocument.xml

 

Here you can see all the guts of the .fla file. 

If you have notepad++, you can see this file quite cleanly.

 

There, i went to view>fold all. That will make the file easy to see.

 

Then, by clicking on the plus signs, i started opening everything. If you want to get to the layers specifically, you can do so by opening the first one, then "timelines", then "domtimeline", then "layers".

 

There you can see each layer, and if you open those, you can see the strokes and objects, etc. 

I limited myself to erasing the layers i needed (you have to select the whole code inside the layer's plus sign, alongside the <domlayer...> </domlayer> tags)

 

Then, the folders will probably cause problems.

The layers refer to the folders they are supposed to go inside of (the "parentLayerIndex" part of the <domlayer...> header). The number referst to the order of layers, and it starts the count from zero. I think it ignores the camera,if you have one. So you need to fix the numbers of those layers, too.

(Or add a blank folder at the start, like this "<DOMLayer name="blankfolder" color="#669900" locked="true" layerType="folder"/>" and then set all parentLayerIndex to equal "0"!)

 

After that, go to view>fold all and check if the code looks kind of alright, and if there is nothing out of place.

Then, save the file, add it back to the rar, change the .rar extension to .fla, and it might work!

It it shows no layers and a white bckground, you probably messed up deleting something. Maybe there is a tag that wasn't deleted, or maybe the layers are pointing to inexistent folders.

 

That was all to delete a layer. If you think this is what's causing you problems, try it! It's not that hard.

 

 

-----------

Another thing you can try, is to export the library of that file from a new file. If you have everything you animated inside an object, it might mean you didn't lose anything!

    A
    AngeloC13081136
    Participant
    November 24, 2017

    thanks adobe coders this is a wonderful piece of software (if you want to quit animation)

      G
      god221874889owp
      Participant
      December 10, 2021

      i just got this isue 4 time in same month whenever my light go this hapen to my fla file why adobe add save feature when we cant recover after small crash

      kglad
      Community Expert
      kgladCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      December 11, 2021

      open AutoRecoverFilenames.txt* and see if there was a saved file and, if so, check the folder location listed

       

      *

      win:

       

      C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Adobe\<animate version>\en_US\Configuration

       

      mac:

      Users/<username>/Application Support/Adobe/<animate/flash version>/en_US/Configuration/

      kglad
      Community Expert
      kgladCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      January 26, 2017

      you may be able to salvage, at least, some part of your work by renaming the corrupt fla as a rar file and using winrar to 'repair' it.  then rename the repaired rar to a fla and try opening in animate cc.  i've never had that work for me, but it's worth a try.

      but even if when that fails, you can usually unrar your renamed fla and salvage, at least, some of your work.  again, it's worth a try.

      E
      EatboxmanAuthor
      Participant
      January 26, 2017

      Hey thanks for replying. I tried all the above with winRAR already (I renamed the file to .rar, tried extracting it, just got an error message) then I tried changing it to .rar and opening it up on winrar and doing the repair to zip and also repair to rar and both just came up with an error message or an empty file. I renamed it back to ,fla anyways to see if it could open but nope.

      I was wonder if anyone else could try because it's odd that the file still has a lot of kilobytes left in it...
      Or if there is some other method for recovering a corrupted file..

      So I'm doomed right? Just say it now doctor, i'm prepared..

      kglad
      Community Expert
      kgladCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
      Community Expert
      January 26, 2017

      you're doomed as far as i can see.  i couldn't fix that with winrar, ziptofix, yodot rar repair or remo repair rar.

      the best you can do, is to prevent that from happening in the future.

      to prevent that, each save should have a different name.  eg, if i have a project called farm_aid, i save as farm_aid_v000.fla, farm_aid_v001.fla, farm_aid_v002 etc.

      i created a jsfl file, added it to my commands directory and created a shortcut, so after naming the first save as farm_aid.fla, the _vxyz is automatically appended when using my shortcut (ctrl-shift-s, in my case).   (if you're interested, i'll supply that jsfl file and walk you through the steps to use it.)

      also, save often.  a typical project for me will have several hundred versions.  i periodically delete the oldest ones and only save the last 10 or 20 in case i need to return to an older version.

      also, all my code is in class files and i've never had one get corrupted.  if i'm about to make a major change in a class file and i don't want to risk losing the older class file, i'll save it as ClassNameBU.as so i have a backup.

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