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kara.taylor
kara.taylor
Participant
August 22, 2025
Question

Illustrator initial "Save" defaulting to "ArcGIS georeferenced PDF (Beta)" - how to fix?

  • August 22, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 265 views

Hi! Sometime over the last month, I noticed that when I save a new project for the first time, the file format is defaulted to "ArcGIS - Georeferenced PDF (Beta) (pdf)" instead of the usual "Adobe Illustrator (ai)". This has caused me to lose a lot of time and work because this file type doesn't save layers or anything like that. Can someone please tell me how to change the default back to .ai?

 

MacOS = Sequoia 15.6

Illustrator = 29.7.1

ArcGIS Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud = 3.9.0 (if this is relevant)

    1 reply

    Ton Frederiks
    Community Expert
    Ton FrederiksCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 22, 2025

    If I create a new file and save it as PDF, the next time I will save a file (even after closing and re opening Illustrator) it will remember the PDF saving. If I change saving to .ai Illustrator will remember that next time.

    kara.taylor
    kara.taylorAuthor
    Participant
    August 22, 2025

    I feel this is specifically for if you are saving a PDF and have PDF presets made. Those PDF presets are the same as the last file save (i.e. Illustrator Default, High Quality Print, etc.).

    Here is what I think you are referencing:

     

    However, this is not the issue I am having. This is only an issue if I start a new file from scratch (not opening an old file, making edits, and resaving), the default file type it selects by default usually is .ai. However, for some reason, this now defaults to "ArcGIS - Georeferenced PDF (Beta) (pdf)" instead.

     

    This is what the file type USED to default as:

     

    And here is what it is defaulting to as now:

     

    I had worked over 3 hours on a tediously and neatly layered map file.. only to try and open the file today and could only find a PDF version where all of the layers had been compressed into one... Very frustrating.

    Ton Frederiks
    Community Expert
    Ton FrederiksCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 22, 2025

    I see, the "ArcGIS - Georeferenced PDF (Beta) (pdf)" is part of your fileformat options.

    Did you contact them? It says beta, so things may not go the way they are supposed to.

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