Inspiring

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Illustrator auto-backup folder error "We're unable to save your file for auto-backup."

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I keep getting this error, have tried to change the location of the folder to several places where I am sure permissions are for everyone to read-write, with no luck. Anyone else having this problem? And figured out how to solve it?

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zachc75635300Correct answer

Inspiring

I missed your comment my first time reading this thread, but I noticed the same issue for myself. Here's how I changed the folder.

1. Go to Illustrator File Handling preferences

2. Select "Choose..."

3. On Mac, press Cmd+Shift+G

4. Type in this path exactly:

/Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Preferences/Adobe Illustrator 26 Settings/en_US/Data Recovery

5. Choose that folder

6. Select "OK" in the preferences window, and you're done!

You might also need to navigate to that same folder in Finder and enable "Read & Write" access for the folder.

This seemed to fix the problem for me!

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Luke346720327awt

Participant

Hi all,

I see that this query is 2 years old, which is very concerning because I'm experiencing the issue constantly.

Any new insights on what's going on here?

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Anshul_Saini

Community Manager

Hi @Luke346720327awt,

I'm sorry to hear about the persistent issue. Would you mind providing more details, like whether you are using any antivirus software and whether the User profile has administrator rights? Ensure you have the necessary permissions, and try changing the auto-backup location to the desktop to see if it helps.

Best,
Anshul Saini

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奇

奇睿295428958rs0

Known Participant

I have enabled all permissions but every time I turn it on I get the same error

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mikee4264619317629510

Participating Frequently

We have the same issue on Windows 10 version 21H2 (19044.1645) for several users running AI 26.2.1.

For the affected users, the Data recovery folder is pointing towards the Illustrator 23 Settings folder which no longer exists on those computers. For me, it points to Illustrator 25 Settings which is not correct either as we are on version 26.

So far, manually changing the path to point to the correct version 26 settings folder fixes the issue but that should not be something a user has to do on their own after an update.

Expected behavior: when updating Illustrator to a new major version all settings folder references are automatically updated to the correct and existing new settings folder.

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Monika Gause

Community Expert

You probably migrated the preferences instead of resetting them.

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Anshul_Saini

Community Manager

Hi All,

We are sorry for the trouble. I would like to know if you are still facing this issue or not. If yes, then I would request you to share a few details like:

The exact version of Illustrator and macOS/ Windows
Are there any recent changes made to your system? For example, any antivirus, system updates, plugins, or web extensions installed recently.
Have you tried resetting Illustrator Preferences (https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/setting-preferences.html)?
Disclaimer: Please note that resetting preferences will remove all the custom settings, and Illustrator will launch with default settings. You can also take a backup of the folders in case you want to. Location is mentioned in the article.

Kindly update the discussion and share this information asked above if you still need assistance with it. We'd be happy to help.

Thanks & Regards,

Anshul Saini

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FoxCadet

Known Participant

Anshul,

I still have this issue unfortunately, but I'll write to provide some clarity. I'm using a Macbook running MacOS Monterey version 12.3.1 with the Apple M1 Max chip and 64 GB RAM. The Illustrator version is 26.2.1.

This started occurring on a brand new Macbook with a clean install of Adobe Creative Cloud. I did not have the issue on my prior Intel-based Macbook.

I tried working with Adobe's support team, but once they took remote control of my desktop, the only thing they did was disable auto-save completely. Sure, this made the notification go away. But it did not address the core issue, because I do want auto-saves to occur as I'm working on documents.

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Anshul_Saini

Community Manager

Hi @FoxCadet,

Thanks for sharing the details and elaborating on the issue with me. Please confirm, if you turn on the data recovery for the complex file does it give you the error if you try to save the simple plain new document with few objects? Does it happen while saving all types of files? Would it be possible for you to share a download link to a sample file?

Also, I would request you to try running the app in Safe Mode & Root account to check if this is happening there as well or not and share your observation with us.

I will be looking forward to your response.

Thanks & Regards,

Anshul Saini

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xitixen

Known Participant

I started having the exact same problem a few weeks ago. It happens when I create a new file. But as soon as I save the file somewhere it goes away. So I just cancel out of the error message, save the empty file as whatever I want it to be wherever I'm planning to work on it, then auto-save proceeds quietly as usual.

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FoxCadet

Known Participant

I've been having the same issue for the past several days, as the issue came up suddenly out of the blue. I've followed all the steps laid out by everyone else who left a reply on this thread and none of them seem to work. My first instinct before finding this thread was to also manually override folder permissions to open up any possibilities there. No luck.

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Lazar Ioana

Participant

Still have the same issue even after the last update, I lost so many files because of this issue. I'm starting to get angry. Illustrator is the only one that when it crashes isn't doing the auto-recovery. This is getting out of hand.

Illustrator v26.2.1.

I have a Macbook pro 15" 2018 with a Radeon Pro Vega 20 4 Go

Please fix this issue

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Monika Gause

Community Expert

Please contact Customer Care. They will probably have to checxk out your system.

https://helpx.adobe.com/contact.html The chat is in the bottom right.

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Lazar Ioana

Participant

I have the same issue. I have a Mac Big Sur 11.6.4. Didn't install yet the newest version because I saw there are many crashes with the update to Monterey. Macbook pro 2018.

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StudioAluminum

Known Participant

Still having this issue as well. When I go into my preferences, it's still linked to a version 24 directory in the libaryar, which no longer exists:

~/Library/Preferences/Adobe Illustrator 24 Settings/en_US*/DataRecovery
…but I have been unable to change it to the "Adobe Illustrator 24 Settings" directory because the Illustrator file finder interface does not allow me to navigate to the Library direcotory, or even manually type in a directory path.

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Monika Gause

Community Expert

It doesn't need to be in the library.

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Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello everyone,

Sorry about this trouble. This looks like a permissions issue on the Data Recovery folder. Please provide read and write access to data recovery folder on the following locations. Steps are shared here:

On macOS:

~/Library/Preferences/Adobe Illustrator <version number> Settings/en_US*/DataRecovery

On Windows:

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator 26 Settings\en_US\x64\DataRecovery

Do try these steps and share your observations with us.

Thanks,
Anubhav

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R

reinko17602090Author

Inspiring

Hi Anubhav,

Thanks for posting. This was the first thing I tried and it did not solve the problem.

I then proceeded to choose a different folder and also made sure the permissions were correctly set. This also didn't make the alerts stop.

For some other reason, the problem has stopped for me. But as stated above, I cannot discover what the solution was. Maybe somebody else can be more helpful? I'd also be happy to share any logs, but was unable to find anything that seemed relevant in there myself.

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Anubhav M

Community Manager

Glad to hear that your problem was solved.

Please keep monitoring the application and get in touch with us if the problem re-surfaces. We'd be happy to help.

Thanks,

Anubhav

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reinko17602090Author

Inspiring

For some reason, I am no longer getting this error, and I just created a document with a random shape, force quit Illustrator and when I reopened it the document was recovered.

I am trying to figure out what may have changed since the problem started. The only thing that comes to mind is my MacBook had a hard crash and so my system has been rebooted.

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