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pllkachu
pllkachu
New Participant
January 17, 2019
Answered

Adobe Animate CC .fla file has an error while opening

  • January 17, 2019
  • 5 replies
  • 27009 views

The past month I've been working on an animation and it took a lot of effort and hard work, but suddenly today I tried to open the file and it says "An error occurred opening file "C:\Users\(my name)\Documents\The thing I'm wowking on.fla". When I click "OK", another error pops up "A JavaScript error occurred In file "Publish.jsfl": Error: File 'C:\Users\(my name)\Documents\The thing I'm wowking on.fla' could not be opened"

After clicking OK again, Animate then shows me a black screen. The File, Edit, View, and everything else is still there. I tried finding how to fix this issue for the past hour but I eventually gave up.

    Correct answer kglad

    make sure you have the latest version of animate.  if you do, your fla is corrupt.

    you can look for a recovery file* and you can try repairing by renaming the fla to a rar, using winrar to repair, renaming the repaired rar to a fla and trying to open the fla in animate.

    *

    win: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Adobe\<animate version>\en_US\Configuration

    mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/<animate/flash version>/en_US/Configuration/

    5 replies

    D
    deoxys7
    New Participant
    October 25, 2025

    I just had a similar issue although, I didn't get the second error message that you got. I managed to recover my file by right clicking the file and selecting one drive. From the next drop down I selected version history. My most recent save still had the error message but my last save before that worked. I lost a little bit of work but it wasn't too bad since I save often.

    L
    Lee27409644p5fd
    New Participant
    December 14, 2024

    I had the same problem, the way I fixed it was through the WinRAR, such as rename the .fla to .rar, then using the WinRAR repair to repair the said .rar file, then renamed it back to .fla. At first this didn't work, so I duplicate the original file with the name (example.fla), and renamed it to (recovery.fla) then only I renamed it to (recovery.rar), and I repeated the same process, and it works. but still, 20% of the file is gone, but at least i got 80% back.

     

    kglad
    kglad
    Adobe Expert
    December 14, 2024

    good to hear your partial success.

    M
    Md Alfaaz31571748nrp4
    New Participant
    August 9, 2023

    Guys do all the things you can, it may work for you but if all the things done by you is not working. 

    Then the only thing will work is

    if you want to get back your .fla file back, the last option is to convert your swf file into  .fla file from adobe animte you can do this

     

    Click ok file

    Then click on New

    Then make a new project, action script 3.0

    After making a new project 

    Click on file 

    Then Click on Import

    Then Import to Stage

    Select your swf file then ok

     

    You will get the things not like previous but yes, you'll get something which you can create again. 

     

    Believe me it works. 

    U
    Uddeshya338427685j42
    New Participant
    January 2, 2025

    not working....

     

    kglad
    kglad
    Adobe Expert
    January 2, 2025

    if you have a working swf, use a decompiler to restore the fla

    S
    sourabh5C3F
    New Participant
    June 26, 2021

    i found the fix although it might be a compromise: i hope it works for you guys as well

    so there was comment somewhere on the internet that said that if you have Auto-self recovery turned on your file is never lost. anyways long story short.

     

    i right clicked on the file that was corrupt and went into properties.

    all i did was going into the previous version tab and restoring it.

    now this will bring a prev version of file. its not a perfect solution but it's better than nothing also i would recommend finding the auto recovery file path if it's missing from the original folder which is usually situated in the *win: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Adobe\<animate version>\en_US\Configuration

    keep in mind that sometimes it has slightly different path.

    good luck

    kglad
    kglad
    Adobe Expert
    June 27, 2021

     win:

    C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Adobe\<animate version>\en_US\Configuration

     

    mac:

    Users/<username>/Application Support/Adobe/<animate/flash version>/en_US/Configuration/

     

    contains a text file (AutoRecoverFilenames.txt) that contains the path/name to the recovery file, if auto-recovery was enabled when the fla was open and corrupted. (ie, open the text file to find the recovery file path)

    D
    DemetriAnimates
    New Participant
    July 9, 2021

    I have auto recovery enabled, but the AutoRecoverFilenames.txt file was empty.

    kglad
    kgladCorrect answer
    Adobe Expert
    January 17, 2019

    make sure you have the latest version of animate.  if you do, your fla is corrupt.

    you can look for a recovery file* and you can try repairing by renaming the fla to a rar, using winrar to repair, renaming the repaired rar to a fla and trying to open the fla in animate.

    *

    win: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Adobe\<animate version>\en_US\Configuration

    mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/<animate/flash version>/en_US/Configuration/

      I
      IronK
      New Participant
      February 13, 2021

      I tried this method but it doesn't work in my case unfortunately. This means no hopes to recover my .fla anymore, right?

      kglad
      kglad
      Adobe Expert
      February 15, 2021

      correct.  that method usually fails, but it's the only (afaik) "repair" method.

       

      however, repair is not the only way to get a working fla.  you may have a working backup (either generated by animate automatically or by you manually) and

       

      1. with as3 projects, you may have a working swf which can often be decompiled to a working fla.

       

      2. with html5/canvas, you can manually edit (in any plain text editor) the js and/or html file.  they'll not be corrupted (though they're not easy to work with even with js,html expertise).

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