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Participant
November 4, 2025
Question

Illustrator 30.0 not autosaving?

  • November 4, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 110 views

I just lost 5 hours of straight work as Illustrator crashed on me and didnt let me recover the files that were open at the time of the crash? What is this? Does installing Illustrator 30.0 mean resetting autosaving-settings to a default with no autosaving?!

2 replies

Participant
November 4, 2025
I can't say what happened this time, but it feels like with illustrator 30.0 its often freezes and crashes when you select something, holds Alt and tries to drag a copy. This time though I don't remember exactly what prompted the crash. The file was opened from its location on a network drive, and I have gotten used to illustrator having autosaved when it crashes, but not this time. How is it possible to have had this session going for 5-6 hours without illustrator doing a backup? I know I should have manually saved it once in a while, but on a busy day you all know how the story goes

Best regards,
Mads Buddig
Grafiker
Konkurrence- og Forbrugerstyrelsen
Direkte +45 4171 5225
E-mail mab@kfst.dk



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Monika Gause
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 5, 2025

Illustrator does not do backups. That is not how that feature works. 

 

It is supposed to save a special file every x minutes that can then be recovered when Illustrator crashes. BUT: if it happens to save that file while Illustrator is crashing, then the file is toast. And btw any file will probably be toast if it gets saved while a crash is happening. That's the reason why you should also never rely on only one copy of a file, but have backups.

 

If you want to have backups, get the plugin Autosaviour. There's even a free version available, which will give you one backup copy of your file. And then of course: save regularly. Save on different volumes. Save different versions. Keep Time Machine running. Just the basic stuff.

Anubhav M
Community Manager
Community Manager
November 4, 2025

Hello @Maxx Buddy,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Would you mind providing some details about the circumstances under which these files were saved or edited, as well as the location where they were stored?

Also, could you confirm if Illustrator crashes when using a particular tool/feature, so we can better assist you?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav