Adobe After Effects Must be installed to import this file

We are in 2025 and I'm still having this problem. Can't relink a previously made set of linked comps thanks to the fun little pop-up everyone else here is all too familiar with. Get real Adobe, this shouldnt be a 5-YEAR issue!

Ugh. Suddenly today, even without doing any updates, PPro refuses to believe that AE is installed; whether I use the release version of PPro and AE or the beta version of PPro and AE. I tried the whole security permissions thing (even though on my Windoze 10 system it does not have an "everyone" in the users etc, so I set "users" to have full permission to do everything, but this made no difference. I uninstalled and reinstalled the beta versions (PPro 25.2.0x83), and that also did not help. I am furious. And it's now 2025.

I sloved this problem by getting rid of (converted) in the aep project file's name, thereby reverting it to its original name.

The message "Adobe After Effects 2024 must be installed to import this file." came up for me when I was re-opening an old project and Premiere and After Effects were going through the motions of making me resave the project files for compatibility.

It's simply unnaceptable that this issue is still happening. 

I've had the same problem multiple times and have had to remake entire sequenes to carry on working. I've tried all the usual uninstall, permissions, preferences fixes and none are working consistently. Get your act together Adobe, Unreal are coming and I'm more than happy to jump ship. I've spent the last two hours trying to fix a project that was working this morning. And it's still not fixed. And my client is waiting. Stop messing about with Firefly and emply some developers to make your programs stable and fast.

try relinking the media by right clicking on the item you want to replace with the AE content and click link media... relocate the AE file and that might work - it fixed this problem for me

Hi,

if you already updated your after effects, you can try restarting your computer(mac) then try opening your premiere again. If that doesnt link up, go to creative cloud and there should be a new AF rason why it doesnt link. constantly needs updating that goes to (BETA)

I have fixed this issue after trying all the suggested fixes, and this hasn't been mentioned anywhere.

For MAC go to Security & privacy > full disk access. Then tick/check the following;

• After Effects
• Premiere pro
• Media encoder
• aerendercore 

aerendercore disk permissions seems to be the key to this problem, I had all the above ticked apart from that and still getting the error. Now it works.

having the same problem ... very frustrating

I'm also experiencing this issue. I've uninstalled PP and AE then reinstalled. They are both the same version (2023); however, I still get the "After Effects 2023 must be installed to import  this file" error. This is making my lose valuable time. I'm very frustrated with Adobe. It seems that several people are experiencing this issues with no resolution.

Still not working on most current versions of PP and AE 😞