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jennifer_4309
Participant
February 5, 2025
Question

Help recover file please

  • February 5, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 184 views

I was working on a file all day long. Auto save was set for every 2 minutes as always. At some poin I started closing preview tabs I was no longer working on, I had quite a number of them oppened, and to my surpise the tab I was working on was no longer oppened. Lets say I closed it by mistake, I have worked in Illustrator for years now and if that were to happened all I had to do is go back to the folder and re-open the file and continue working. Now, here is the question, I went back to the folder, re-opened the file and to my surprise again all the work I have done during the day was reset to the previous day. Can somebody help me to recover this file?  

2 replies

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Monika GauseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 12, 2025

Probably not.

 

To prevent this in the future:

Come up with a backup strategy.

Save your files early. Save often, save different versions. If you can't remember to save a file, get the plugin Autosaviour. There is a free version available.

If you have a Mac, turn on Time Machine.

If you do not have a lot of RAM installed, turn off everything you don't need while working. Yes, this includes your browser.

If you have issues with electricity outages, get a UPS 

 

In the Illustrator preferences turn off "Save in background".

Don't rely on the recovery function as your only fallback mechanism. 

Rene Andritsch
Community Expert
Rene AndritschCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 12, 2025

First check which folder you specified in the Preferences > File Handling & Clipboard section for Recovery Data.

 

Secondly you could check these locations as outlined on the Illustrator help pages:

 

WINDOWS

  1. Type %AppData% in Windows Search.
  2. Navigate to Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator [version] Settings\en_US\x64\DataRecovery
  3. Open the file with the .aid extension in Illustrator to recover the content.

 

MACOS

  1. Select Go in the menu bar and then select Go to Folder.
  2. Type ~ /Library/ and press Return.
  3. Navigate to Preferences/Adobe Illustrator [version] Settings/en_US/DataRecovery
  4. Open the file with the .aid extension in Illustrator to recover the content.

For further info go here https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/recover-files-after-crash.html

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