Someone help please my after effects says the following

[Jackie Umana]

Adobe After Effects Error: preferences file "Adobe After Effects 14.0 Win en_US shortcuts.txt" is not valid. The file will be renamed with ".old" , and a new preferences file will be created.

(21 :: 31)

I literally looked all over the internet to fix this problem but nothing worked. I have projects that i worked hours on an i open them and it says this

after effects unable to import file "my file" as project (bad format or not readable)

Its so frustrating because this happened five times to me and I always had to recreate the project all over again. I do have auto-save on and I do save my files frequently while editing.

I REALLY need help on this, I'm so tired of having to redo the whole project

(I have windows 10, and aecc2018)

[Omar.Fathy · Accepted solution]

Try deleting the file with the name: Adobe After Effects 14.0 Prefs.txt

You can find it in :

C:\Users\(User_Name)\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\After Effects\(After Effects Version)\

[Byron Cortez]

Try this:

Immediately when you click to open After Effects, press Ctrl + Shft + Alt and hold until a dialog box appears indicating whether you want to delete the preferences. This will remove Ae's preferences to default settings.

Regards!