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R
rachEHS
December 8, 2025
Question

Issues with team use of Adobe Creative Cloud files

  • December 8, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 153 views

We are in product design team and have created 'projects' on creative cloud for our aic. files. Our product designer accesses these files to update dielines and our graphic designer accesses them to add/refine the artwork or print layers. Other team members open the files from time to time to export assets as SVGs. Why does Creative Cloud not notify you when a file is already OPEN or IN USE by another user? Can I change a setting so it is not possible to open a file if another team member already has this aic. file open?

1 reply

A
Community Manager
Anshul_NautiyalCommunity Manager
Community Manager
December 8, 2025

Hi @rachEHS,

Thanks for reaching out. I understand the workflow challenges you're experiencing when multiple team members need to access the same Illustrator (.aic / .ai) files stored in Creative Cloud. Illustrator Cloud Documents (.aic) and other Creative Cloud–synced files do not currently implement real-time file locking across users. Instead, Illustrator supports asynchronous editing, where only one collaborator can actively edit a shared cloud document at a time.

If the shared cloud document is already open on another system, Illustrator will display a prompt where you can choose:

Make a Copy – to continue working on a separate copy of the document

OK – and reopen the file once the current user finishes their changes

To avoid silent overwrites or conflicting versions, we strongly recommend using Invite to Edit for controlled collaboration. This workflow ensures:

Only one active editor at a time

Auto-saving to the cloud with full version history

Reduced risk of accidental file conflicts

Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any further questions.

 

Regards,

^AN

R
rachEHSAuthor
December 8, 2025
Thank you Anshul for getting back to me.
 
Can you provide me with further details regarding the ‘invite to edit’. We know of this function but because both the product designer, graphic designer and head of product all have access to the ‘projects’ in Creative Cloud (and therefore all the files within them), we are still encountering the issue of the same file accidentally being opened by more than one team member.
 
How do other product design teams navigate this? Do they have a specific work flow that only 1x manager can open aic. Files and any other team member only does so IF they receive an ‘invite to edit’ notification?
 
At the moment, I can open an aic. File from creative cloud and work on it. If my colleague then opens this file 10 minutes later, they DO NOT get a notification that it is in use when the file opens/is opening. 
They do get a notification if they make an edit and then close the file or select file ’save’ but the notification is not an option to save a copy, adobe is automatically saving a copy. See screenshots. 
 
When this has occurred sometimes we end up with 2x duplicate files in Creative Cloud (see screen shot ‘duplicate files made’ BUT, on other occasions, adobe has said there is a file conflict so it is saving a copy but then we cannot find where that copy is saved. See screen shot ‘conflicting copy’. Adobe support suggests the conflicting copy is saved locally on our mac Creative Cloud files but we can not find it.2x colleagues editing same file accidentallyDuplicate created in projects on CC1x person actively editing, 2nd only opens file to export an SVG. asset, not edits made. This time the 'copy' DID not get saved to CC.
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