missing files in After-Effects tutorial-folder

[Konni_Mondfisch]

Hey there 🙂 
pretty new to AE and currently working through the tutorials.
After the first few which can be directly worked on in the porgram i wanted to download a few others from the AE-Website. Unfortunately after i unzip the folders and open the composition the following warning pops up: "# files are missing since saving the last session" (roughly translated German).
I looked into the unzipped folders and indeed theres always just one file in the "sources"-folder where there should be 4 or 5 or more.
I am using After Effects 18.4.0. (Build 41) on a MacBook Air 2020 (Big Sur, M1). 
Any suggestions, what could be done to not have missing files in the unzipped tutorial-folder? I unzipped the correct way...
Thanks in advance 🙂 !

[David Arbor]

Can you post a link to the tutorial that has the missing files? I might be able to forward it onto some people who can help.

[Konni_Mondfisch]

Hey David, 
thanks for the quick reply!
The first i tried and failed was: 

https://helpx.adobe.com/de/after-effects/how-to/animating-with-expressions.html?playlist=/services/p...

But from there on it`s every single one of them 😕 none of them seems to be complete - or something went wrong while downloading...
Maybe it has something to do with the latest update i did a few days ago? 
Thanks anyway - I`m standing by 🙂 

[David Arbor · Accepted solution]

Hey Konni, I just downloaded the Animating with Expressions project, unzipped it, then opened, with no errors. Is the drive you're running the project from by any chance not your C drive? Or perhaps it has something to do with the German language version of After Effects. Either way, I think all the files are there, you might just need to relink them. The only source file in that project is POW.ai. When you open After Effects:

1) Right-click on any of the .ai layers > Replace Footage > File

2) Navigate to POW.ai and select "Import." Make sure the "Illustrator/PDF/EPS Sequence" box is NOT checked

3) A new dialog should popup where you can select "Choose Layer" and pick the proper layer from the dropdown.

4) Make sure to select "Layer Size" from the bottom dropdown named "Footage Dimensions." I realize all these names are in English, so hopefully there won't be any issue finding the corresponding ones on your end.

If that works, you might have to do this for each of the layers. All I did was let the project save to my default C:\User\Downloads folder, unzip it and open it up. If you did the same, then I think the issue might be the language of the app looking for a differently named file or folder.

[Konni_Mondfisch]

No it wasn`t my C-drive and apparently this was the whole issue.
Thanks a lot - everything (also the other ones) is working great now! 🙂 

[David Arbor]

Great, I'm glad that worked! I hope you enjoy learning After Effects. It's challenging, but very fun.