Participant

Question

How do I recover files after a crash that simply didn't open?

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
November 21, 2024
34 replies
43997 views

i was working in illustrator (beta) 29.3.0 when it crashed. upon reopening it, i got a popup that it recovered the two opened files. i hit 'confirm' to open the recovered files, then nothing happened. can i recover them manually somehome?

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ShikoMT

Participant

I just lost 7 hours of work, I was putting the finishing touches on an illustration and was using the node merge tool and at one point the program crashed and closed and there is no solution to recover files. Beautiful morning, isn't it? :c

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SteveClayton

Participating Frequently

I too am only seeing these garbage .aishm files. Why is this? Seems like anither essential feature that Adobe has messed about with and broken. Autosave is also set to upload to the cloud, gut suprise, suprise - there are no files showing there either.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Are you talking about Autosave for Cloud files?

Or about File recovery?

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @vincentd6087485,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Would you mind confirming if the file was saved locally on your computer and in which directory?

Also, please check if your file is still available in the recovery folder as an AID file. If yes, please share a link to the file after uploading it to a file-sharing service so I can check it. Although I cannot guarantee a successful recovery, I will try my best to do so.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

vincentd6087485Author

Participant

thank you. it was. after posting this i read i should 'open the .aid file in illustrator,' so i tried to. it did nothing, other than make the only .aid file dissapear from the datarecovery folder.

illustrator just crashed again, with the same issue. said it recovered my files upon reboot, but did not load them. the datarecovery folder doesn't have a .aid file this time. still missing since yesterday. there are only .aishm files from today in any of the subfolders.

Anubhav M

Community Manager

@Anubhav M
Hello, for no apparent reason the Adobe_illustrator(version 2025_29.3) program has closed (I have been experiencing this frequently lately). The file I was working on for about 2 hours yesterday suddenly closed and when I reopened it, it did not recover again. I have been looking for recovery files since yesterday but only .aishm files are available.
I just saw your answer and I would like to say that the file I was working on is on a removable SSD disk. After today I will copy it to the local file and work there and then save it back to disk. Unfortunately it's an unsolvable situation, Adobe should improve this issue. Thanks for the answer though.

Quote from you: “Can you verify if the file is saved to a network, removable drive, or a cloud-synced folder such as Google Drive or Dropbox? Storing files in such locations can sometimes lead to corruption issues. To prevent this from happening in the future, we recommend that you first save your work locally and then manually copy it to the desired backup location.”

Hello @KÜN Kurumsal İletişim,

Although Illustrator supports working across networks, removable media, and cloud-synced folders (Google Drive / Dropbox / OneDrive, etc.), and is vigorously tested across multiple configurations, not all configurations, including different software, hardware, settings, and access rights, have been tested. Therefore, your configuration can cause errors, crashes, or unexpected behavior. You may learn more about this here: (https://adobe.ly/4hHL2dN).

I understand this is not ideal, and I apologize for the inconvenience. Additionally, for help with crashes, kindly try the suggestions shared in this help article (https://adobe.ly/432a1nE) and check if they help.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

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Rum27

Participating Frequently

I am using a Mac system and have encountered the same issue in both AI 2024 and AI 2025. I have already enabled the auto-recovery feature. When Illustrator crashes suddenly and I reopen the software, a pop-up window appears saying that the files have been recovered. However, the recovered files are not in the state they were before the crash—they are reverted to the last manually saved version.

I later checked the auto-recovery folder and found some files saved today, but I couldn’t open them and am unsure if they are functioning properly.

When I used AI 2022/2023, the auto-recovery feature worked perfectly. Additionally, my colleagues working on the same network are experiencing the same issue with AI 2025—the auto-recovery function is no longer working, even though it used to function normally in previous versions.

Moreover, some very simple files are causing the software to crash frequently. After one crash, the same file will continue to crash multiple times within a single day. I’m not sure if this is an issue with the software itself or something else, but all I want is for the auto-recovery feature to work again.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Donot rely on the Auto recovery function alone ever.

Save your files.

Also: you mention a network - are you saving to a server? That is generally a risky workflow that I would avoid. And it prevents Time Machine from backing up your files.

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Rum27

Participating Frequently

Thanks for the reminder! I’m using Autosaviour to help with my work for now, but I really hope the auto-recovery feature can work properly again—it used to be fine.

Also, I think I might not have explained clearly. The files weren’t saved to a server, but my colleagues in the same office, using the same version of Illustrator, are all having the same issue. I’m wondering if it could be something like shared settings causing this, maybe something network-related (though that seems unlikely). Anyway, thanks again for your reply!

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