Converting CDR file to AI Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator cannot open or place CDR files. Several versions ago (I don't remember exactly when) there was a time, briefly, when Illustrator could open/import CDR files. I remember the import filter crashing my installation of Illustrator so badly I had to completely uninstall all of my Creative Suite apps, clean any references of the apps and then reinstall just to get things operational again. That CDR import filter in Illustrator vanished not long after that.

AFAIK, Inkscape is the only vector graphics application outside of CorelDRAW that can import CDR files. And its capabilities at importing CorelDRAW artwork are somewhat limited. OTOH, it can import early version CDR files made before CorelDRAW 6, which is something modern versions of CorelDRAW strangely cannot do.

For the time being anyone trying to move artwork from CorelDRAW into Illustrator has to use Corel's Illustrator CS6 export filter. The problems don't end there either.

The past few builds of Illustrator, including the current version (29.5.1) and beta build (29.6.180) will not open an Illustrator file exported out of CorelDRAW if the file has any live text objects in it. The familiar "Illustrator could partially open this file" error box will be displayed; all that will open is a blank document. The only work-around for this is by having a version 28 build of Illustrator installed. The Corel-exported AI file has to be opened in that version of Illustrator and then re-saved in order for it to open successfully in a version 29 build of Illustrator.

And then even in an Illustrator 28 build, an AI file made by CorelDRAW will still have some problems. Live text objects often have line spacing utterly corrupted. The trick around that is by creating a new Illustrator document and making text objects similar to those in the Corel-exported AI file. Copy the fresh text objects with proper line spacing into the Corel-exported document. Use the eyedropper tool to copy the properties of the good text objects over the bad ones.

PDF files exported from CorelDRAW are not very edit-friendly. Sometimes the live text objects will open with line spacing and tracking looking proper. But the text strings may be broken apart in many separate segments. Third party plugins like Vector First Aid can fix those problems to some degree.

I don't recommend using SVG as an intermediary exchange format to pass content from CorelDRAW to Adobe Illustratror. Lots of things in the artwork will break. For one thing SVG has no native support for CMYK. Certain kinds of other fills can effects will be expanded, flattened or even turned into pixel-based objects.

Currently the only approach that works (sort of) for exporting CorelDRAW artwork into Illustrator is using Corel's Illustrator AI export filter and choosing CS6 format. The filter can export a multi-page CorelDRAW document into Illustrator with the pages on multiple art boards.

CorelDraw 2022 version 24.0.0.301

The file is a full marketing book created in Corel which is why the size is so large. When converting I have had to do it in 2 parts as it only allows 100 pages per time