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GABRIEL22829565mgx2
Participant
April 27, 2026
Question

My Illustrator 26 files will not open, Can't Open the illustration. The file is locked or in use. ID: -54

  • April 27, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 6 views

None of my Adobe Illustrator files will open and I have recieved this error that says “Can’t open the Illustration. The file is locked or in use. ID: -54

 

I tried everything, I restarted my laptop, I tried opening files on Adobe InDesign which worked perfectly but somehow it does not open in Illustrator.

    1 reply

    Harshika Verma
    Community Manager
    Community Manager
    April 27, 2026

    Hi GABRIEL22829565mgx2,

    Thank you for reaching out, and sorry for the trouble in opening the Illustrator file. A few more details would be super helpful for further investigation.

    • Would you mind telling us the details of your operating system and the version of Illustrator installed on your machine?
    • You mentioned you have issues with all 26 Illustrator files, right?
    • Is there anything common among these files, such as being stored at a particular location?
    • Are you using any common font that might be causing issues?
    • Are you opening the file from a remote location, such as a network drive, synced storage, or an external drive?


    We will try our best to investigate the issue and help you further.

    Thanks,

    Harshika