Opening old ai files?

Question

I have two files, from 2020 and 2021 that I have been unable to open. The main issue arose when my laptop broke and everything was uploaded to the cloud. When I retrieved these files from the cloud on my new laptop (with Illustrator 2023), they won't open. I don't even get an error message, or a dialogue box, or a little bouncing icon. I click and I get nothing. I tried right clicking and "open in illustrator" and still get nothing. In a last ditch effort I thought maybe they needed to be opened on the laptop they were created on. I got my old mac to work (with an hdmi cable) and went to open the files. Turns out I took them off icloud when I tried to open them on my new mac, so I didn't have the originals on the old mac anymore. I sent myself the files from my new mac to my old mac, and STILL won't open on my old mac.

Please help. Honestly I don't need an answer for the future, I've learned my lesson on backing up files- If someone could just open these files for me and send back? Please Adobe!!!

camryna10528936 · Accepted Answer

Thanks for sharing the files, @camryna10528936. It seems like the file size collectively is very small (389 bytes), which indicates that the files were never properly synced or downloaded to your Mac.

Unfortunately, since these files are not technically Illustrator files and were not properly synced or downloaded, there is no way to recover them.

To prevent this issue from happening in the future, you might want to double-check that your files are properly syncing and downloading from the cloud before making any changes to them. You can also consider creating backups of your files to ensure that you don't lose any important data.

Please feel free to reach out if you have any further questions or concerns.

Best,

Anshul Saini

Thank you for all your help, I appreciate you taking the time to look into this.

I found an old pdf of one of them, so hopefully I can use that to recreate it, but the other one is gone gone. Lesson learned!!

Anshul_Saini · Answer

Hi @camryna10528936,

I'm sorry to hear about the difficulties you are experiencing in opening your old AI files. I understand how important these files are to you, and I assure you that I will do my best to assist you.

To investigate the issue further, I kindly request you share the files with me here or via DM. This will enable me to access the files and identify whether there is an issue with the files themselves or with Illustrator.

In the meantime, I recommend checking if the files are synced correctly from the cloud. You can try downloading them to your desktop folder and checking if they open in Illustrator or not. Additionally, please ensure that the file size is adequate, as files less than 1MB may not have been synced correctly or may have become corrupted.

I'll be looking forward to hearing back from you soon.

Best,
Anshul Saini

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