"Flash can not parse this document" - CS5 Issue

I am experiencing this problem today. I have an FLA that was orignally CS3 (I never used CS4). For kicks I downloaded a the CS4 trial to see if nrajban's fix would work, but it won't open in CS4. So at this point I have a CS5 file that simply won't open.

I'm experiencing this issue as well, running Flash CS5 11.0.2.489 on win7 x64.  I've tracked it down to a single, reproducible action that causes the file to become corrupt on saving:

      I have a custom swc component in the root of my library.  If I drag that component into a folder, any folder, and save the file, the resulting file will be corrupted (CS5 fla or xfl).

It doesn't matter which folder I put the component into. I have plenty of other components in the file which I move around without killing it. No empty frames are in the file, this is not a CS4 import, and it has no weird AS3 empty or extended text chars as some others have reported as a cause for them.

The bin and library folders and files  are identical between the pre-corrupt and the corrupted version. The main difference in the DOMDocument.xml file is the swcPath change to the moved component (both the corrupt and pre-corrupt refer to a non-existant xml file with the same name as the component -- which appears to be the norm for components in the DOMDocument.xml file).  There do not appear to be any other significant differences between the folders or files. 

It seems like there's something about the component that's tripping it up, but I can't find out what that might be.  I checked the publish settings, rebuilt the swc and re-imported (replaced) the offending component, but it did not help (new component still works in the root, corrupts in a folder).  If I export the component under a different name, re-import it without replacing the old one, then I can move the new one into a folder without causing corruption (leaving the original in the root).  However, moving the original into a folder will still corrupt the file.

The file is NOT corrupted if I save it as a CS4.fla.   If I then take the CS4 file, close and reopen it in CS5, then re-save it as a CS5 file (fla or xfl), it will not be corrupted (even with the original component in a folder).  The workaround appears to be to stick with CS4 format.

--Lars

Hi

My file also got corupted!!!!! .

Is this fixed in 5.5? Because Chetana said that this was fixed in update 11.0.2.489 and that isnt true because I have that version!

My company already purchased CS5.5. Can i also mail my document so Adobe can fix it for me? please.

I am trying to fix it myself but this is a lot of work and I dont know if it will work for sure!

Paul

So, th elast post on this was in May but I'm hoping someone still has a clue how to resolve this issue. I've got a file with hundreds of man hours invested and neither it or three weeks of back-ups will open. "Flash can not parse this document."

This is a file that I was working with and creating SWF files from on Friday.

I'm using CS5 11.0.2.489

I updated to OS X Lion a few weeks ago but have opened and closed this file without issue since then.

I need help urgently as I'm up against a deadline.

Thus again, this problem with CS5 is still prevalent! This error is very serious as I've read many complaints about it in numerous forums, and countless individuals have lost hours upon hours of work. I created my file in CS5 and worked on this project for close to a week, and after a recent save, discovered I could not open it again. I received the error that it could not be parsed.

I decompiled the file by following the steps provided in these and other forums by copying, changing to zip, reviewing the xml files, etc, etc., and discovered that in DOMDocument.xml file, well over half of the code was missing, so I was unable to save any of my work or rescue the file.

I don't want to experience this in the future, or with an even larger project! I would like to downgrade somehow to CS4, or Adobe, if you have a fix that we can download for this nasty bug in CS5. I would like to resolve this before starting anymore projects. Is the only answer to save our projects multiple times under different names and in different folders?

I can't get the fixes to work. For some reason, the flash file saved fine and all, and then when I opened it two days later, it said that it couldn't parse the document. Same with the older .fla I had from a month ago. I tried the .zip fixes but they wouldn't work (I'm on a mac, maybe that's why?). Anyway, It's rather important as it's a large file and it would take days to try to recreate what I had.

…Thanks, Adobe.

This problem is still occuring (An earlier post said it might be fixed with the update but it is still happening - sorry) I was using Flash CS5 exclusively (not switching form CS4) when my fla file would no longer work when trying to open the project today.

Though, following the steps that some of you presented (i.e. the fla to zip  solution) fixed my problem file. Thanks!!!

I think my problem came about when duplicating a symbol to make another symbol with the same attributes but different content. I recommend just making new symbols until there is an Adobe update to really fix this problem.

Noooo I was ready to publish this then this happened!!! I'm using cs5

I encountered this error as well.

I changed extension to ZIP.

Opened in WinRAR - rebuilt it under the menu "options"

Opened the DOMDocument.xml file

Copied it's contents and then went to:

http://validator.w3.org/check

Pasted via "direct input"

Checked it - 2 errors.

Turns out in one my text fields I had invalid characters.  They showed up as "ETX" ( white text on a black background )

Deleted them in the XML file.  Saved.

Zipped the contents back up and renamed the extension ".fla"

Works..

quickly saved as a CS4 file hahaha.

( i also had seen some ambiguous references to flash.ai assets - deleted those layers and removed the xml entry out of the top symbols list too - this combination didn't really seem to do much... did the above and it finally worked )

Whoa, this is complete BS. I can't believe a bug like this exists. I tried the steps previously posted and successfully fixed my corrupted file. I changed .fla to .zip then looked for the corrupted XML. Unfortunately for me the corrupted XML was the main one (DOMDocument.xml) so it wasn't as easy as deleting a library item and re-saving as a cs4 file. I had to manually parse the XML looking for any syntax errors, and what I did was basically delete all the XML blocks that are layers in the flash documents:

        <DOMLayer name="slide6" color="#9933CC" autoNamed="false">
          <frames>
            <DOMFrame index="0" keyMode="9728">
              <elements>
                <DOMSymbolInstance libraryItemName="people" name="people" centerPoint3DX="71" centerPoint3DY="101">
                  <matrix>
                  <Matrix a="0.400802612304688" d="0.400802612304688" tx="23.5" ty="53.5"/>
                  </matrix>
                  <transformationPoint>
                    <Point x="118.5" y="118.5"/>
                  </transformationPoint>
                  <color>
                  <Color alphaMultiplier="0"/>
                  </color>
                </DOMSymbolInstance>
              </elements>
            </DOMFrame>
          </frames>
        </DOMLayer>

And I added them one by one, checking the .xfl each time. I was able to narrow the error down to ONE CHARACTER inside a text layer. That's right, not a syntax error or an empty frame or a corrupted library item. One single character caused the error and made me waste hours of time looking through XML :   (looks like an empty space, it might get stripped by the forum editor too). I'm lucky my project was small  enough but I wonder how many people have had to redo huge projects  because of one character since they probably didn't want to look through  hundreds of xml files.

I'm lucky my project was small enough but I wonder how many people have had to redo huge projects because of one character since they probably didn't want to look through hundreds of xml files.