Animate question mark ????

[Vesta Wings]

HELP!!! My daughter went to work on her (laborious, time-consuming) animation project this morning only to find the Abimate 2019 app has a question mark and is unresponsive. She's a bit freaked out, I am too, and we can't get through to Adobe. I pay for the Suite for her but I'm lost on how to help her with this, other than uninstal and reinstall the app, which she is scared to do (she's worried she'll lose her work, which she shouldn't right?) and says she doesn't know how. Can anyone PLEASE direct me on whether this is safe, and how? My daughter and I would appreciate it so so much. TY!!!

[kglad]

she might lose all, some or none of her work.

you won't find out until you exit animate and check the fla file(s) that she saved and/or the auto-recovery* file created by animate.

but whatever the situation, she should learn to prevent this from ever happening again. ie, LEARN to save fla files frequently with increasing version number appended to the files name. eg, for project1.fla, save as project1_v000.fla, then project1_v001.fla, then project1_v002.fla etc

periodically, close the currenct version and reopen it to verify it's not corrupt.  if it is corrupt, go to the previous version and check it etc until you get to the latest uncorrupted version.

*

open AutoRecoverFilenames.txt** and see if there was a saved file and, if so, check the folder location listed

* *

win:

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

mac:

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

[Vesta Wings]

Ty, sharing this with her. ❤

[kglad]

you're welcome.

there's more that can be done if, for example, your daughter has a fla that's corrupted.  about 1/10 of the time that corrupted fla can be repaired using winrar.

anyway, let me know what she finds or if she needs more help.

[Vesta Wings]

TY!

No matter what she must delete and reinstall Adobe Animate right? 

[kglad]

not necessarily.  if animate won't start, then reser preferences.*

if that fails, uninstall (including preferences) and reinstall.••

•
bottom of page here --

https://helpx.adobe.com/animate/using/set-preferences.html

**
uninstall  including preferences, https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/help/uninstall-remove-app.html