jeremygordonart

Participating Frequently

Question

Unknown Format Error in Illustrator

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
December 11, 2021
2 replies
713 views

Hi,

I've been running into the issue on Illustrator version 25.4.1 on 64 bit windows of Illustrator saying: unknown format, unable to open file.

When I try to open an exact duplicate of the file that I made to back up, it opens fine. So I'm really not sure why this could be happening, and why it's only on random files. This is causing me to not be able to work in Illustrator with any faith of it not corrupting my hours of work.

Anyone know a solution?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Community Expert

Community Expert

Did you try restarting your computer?

jeremygordonartAuthor

Participating Frequently

Yeah I've restarted a few times since then and still have the issue. It's only happened on a couple files so far randomly.

jeremygordonartAuthor

Participating Frequently

The seeming randomness of it though is what scares me that it's going to happen again randomly on an important file.

Community Expert

Community Expert

Where are your files located and exactly how do you make the backup?

Which Windows is it?

jeremygordonartAuthor

Participating Frequently

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit.

My files are on my desktop. I made a backup by doing Save As and just saving it as the same type of file with a different name.

Community Expert

Community Expert

This process should work. And also the location should.

Do you have issues with files from other applications as well?

If saving on the desktop does not work, I would sheck my harddisk for issues.

You could also try and check if this is something with Illustrator's preferences. Rename the preferences folder and see if it helps.

Or create a new user on the computer, lunch into it and then try if Illustrator works.