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Freehand to Illustrator CC2017

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We have thousands of old Freehand files and need to convert many of them to Illustrator.How do I convert Freehand files to Illustrator CC2017?

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Alejandro226725290cl3

Participant

For people like me that have the same problem five years later: download FreeHand MX 11 from here "https://archive.org/details/FreeHandMX", and use it for export yours FH11 to an AI project.

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enriquefornes

Participating Frequently

The link to download leads to a non existant page. Great. All morning lost trying to open an old freehand file (made by adobe!!). Why is there a paid plugin to convert fh files to illustrator? why does not adobe make it FOR FREE?

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dragn142298

Participant

Still dealing with this issue as well. Why would Adobe buy out Freehand support it's files for years and then all of the sudden nope. We don't support our own product files anymore. Thousands of designs lost

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Monika Gause

Community Expert

You can import FreeHand files into Illustrator using the tensai plugin.

https://tensai.co.uk/ai/

For some files, you can also use Open Source Scribus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dH7k00nO2Y

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Mike Diehl

Known Participant

I tried two links in this thread to get to that script file, but the file has been removed -- the first click takes me to a nearly identical page, and clicking (again) on a Download button, I get an error:

http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/illustrator/mac/cs4/FreehandToAI.zip

Can anyone please send me the script? I don't need to do this often but like many of you I have an enormous archive of FH files. Too many and too widely archived to collect to have Tensai do it -- plus, the only time I asked them for help, the FH file was too old for even them to tackle. (And I still have AI CS5 around, and it'll still open on my OS10.13 iMac, but it's not happy. I can fire up my Mac Pro if need be.)

The computer thing is forward looking, but there really oughta be a way to preserve work done in obsolete apps.

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Monika Gause

Community Expert

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Mike+Diehl schrieb
Too many and too widely archived to collect to have Tensai do it -- plus, the only time I asked them for help, the FH file was too old for even them to tackle.

You can still buy the Tensai plugin. You need that plugin, because the script will only work in versions up to CS5.

Only the Tensai plugin can connect CC versions to Adobe's old FreeHand import module.

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Mike Diehl

Known Participant

Thank you, Monika. I've never used a script in AI but launched AI CS5.1, and looked around. I saw a FreehandToAI script already among those available, and tried using it to access my FH file. They were greyed out; perhaps the files are too old (They're FH 3.0, according to Tensai's online tool.) The app quit "unexpectedly" so I relaunched, and accessed your script via the Other Script... option. Same result.

If I thought Tensai's plug-in (at $57 + EU VAT) would work on all my FH files, or even most of them, I'd pop for it in a heartbeat. Even they say results are mixed, especially for older files.

I appreciate your response and attempt to help.

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Monika Gause

Community Expert

Check if the plugin FHInterface is available for CC2017: www.tensai.co.uk

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pammi_swissarmyAuthor

Participant

I saw that suggestion on one of the other boards, but that plugin is not free and we were looking for a free option.

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