The file is an unknown format and cannot be opened(Illustrator)

Question

Hello,I am a graphic design major in my first year of college. I use illustrator and photoshop on a daily bases for projects.As of recently my files on illustrator from school will not open at home, stating the error "The file "" is an unknown format and cannot be opened".For photoshop files I am given the error "Could not complete your request because photoshop does not recognize this type of file".Any file saved at school I cannot open at home, even if I previously was able to. At school we have the new apple IMac computers and at home I have a regular PC (I'm not sure of any specs or how to locate them). I was wondering if anyone had any soluctions because this is getting in the way of my schooling and potential career.Thank you for your time

Bobby Henderson · Answer

If you're using a portable storage device (such as a flash memory stick) to move files between a Mac and PC is the device formatted with a file allocation table that is compatible with both platforms? IIRC, that would be either FAT32 or exFAT. I'm not sure if systems running Mac OSX can read NTFS formatted volumes from Windows. And Windows PCs can't properly read HFS+ volumes from a Mac.

The next issue could be how the files are named. I'm not sure if this really matters anymore, but traditionally any files used on Windows PCs need to have a file name ending with a dot and a multiple letter suffix after it. For Adobe Illustrator files it would be something like "design01.AI". The suffix tells the OS what application assocation to assign to it. I've been able to drag and drop files lacking that suffix into application windows and have them still open successfully. But sometimes the suffix is needed in the file name. Certain settings in Windows can hide the file name suffixes in places like Windows File Explorer.

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