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Jerem�as_Sueldo9799
Participant
March 24, 2025
Question

Auto Recovery problems, "unknown file format"

  • March 24, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 297 views

Hi everyone

I've been experiencing problems with the autorecovery feature of illustrator since forever. I use it almost everyday and sometimes I just flip my notebook screen down without turning it off. This, off course, leads to times where it turns off by itself due to low battery or similar.

As you can imagine I've lost a lot of unsaved files because of this, sometimes I remember to save it and sometimes I don't. I know, I have to be more careful.

 

The problem is that I DO have the auto save feature enabled, configured to save my works every 2 minutes. But I have NEVER been able to recover ANY of the auto saved files.

 

Please, would someone explain me how am I supposed to open these files? Right click-Open with AI is not working, neither does dragging them into the program window. I've also tried adding the .ai extension at the end but it doesn't help at all.

 

Plus, this last work I lost was opened for like a full day (2 days ago) and illustrator never made a auto-save copy of it, because the last file I have on the recovery folder has a two week past date. So, the "2 minute" config seems to be failing too.

2 replies

Srishti Bali
Community Manager
Srishti BaliCommunity Manager
Community Manager
March 24, 2025

Hi @Jerem�as_Sueldo9799

 

Sorry to hear about your lost files. Monika has clearly explained how file recovery works—temporary files are saved in the Data Recovery folder. When you click on the file, Illustrator will attempt to open it. If it doesn’t open, the file is lost, as the temp file auto-deletes.

A best practice, in addition to Monika’s advice, is to immediately save a copy of the recovered file to another location before attempting to open it. If it doesn’t open, share the copy with us, and we’ll take a look from our end.

 

 

Regards,

Srishti

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Monika GauseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 24, 2025

Recovery is not Autosave.

 

You have to be more careful with your files, because the way you are treating them is not sustainable. Just closing the lid of your cpomputer at the end of the day isn't either. These machines are not made for 24/7/356. You have to reboot them regularly so that the system can do some clean up routines.

 

In order to save your files:

- save them early in the process

- save them often

- save different versions, because when your only file gets lost then having it saved every 5 minutes wouldn't help either.

- save on different harddisks

- get something like Time Machine for your computer

- turn off Save in Background in the Illustrato preferences.

 

When you have all that, then File Recovery is the icing on the cake. It's not meant to replace a proper backup. And will never be. Because everything can crash your computer, it doesn't even need to run in the foreground. harddisks can fail. batteries can fail. Power outages happen.

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