Participant

Question

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

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
November 21, 2024
35 replies
45548 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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carlosmarcial

Participant

Recovery Tuto speak about aid Files... but it seems now in the Recovery Files we got aishm fiiles... ok why not but why we can open these files in illustrator ? loool like all of you lost 5 hours of work... Fix this Adobe please

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Recovery is not a backup solution and should not be used as such. The files are not meant to be just opened.

That apart: sometimes the Illustrator team can actually save something from your files. @Anshul_Saini can you please try?

Nevertheless you need to come up with a trusty backup routine. Save your files early, save often, save different versions on different harddisks. Turn on Time Machine if on a Mac. Get a backup solution if on Windows.

Illustrator recovery is the icong on the cake.

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carlosmarcial

Participant

That's not the issue, and there's no point in repeating "get into the habit of saving" when we're deeply focused on our work. Everyone forgets to save sometimes, especially when working on something that requires a lot of attention to detail. The question here is: what are these new formats aishm... and why aren't they working? Personally, I checked the file management settings, and autosave is enabled every 2 minutes... Despite that, it didn't change anything, whereas with the old Illustrator, if this happened, it would instantly recover my recent file

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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.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Beta versions can be unstable. That's why they are betas.

The recovery function is not a backup. You need to save your work regularly. Particularly when using a beta version.

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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.

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volnoriz

Participating Frequently

I confirm. Autosave is not working properly. I set "auto-save efery 5 minutes" (for complex docs too) but after crash Illustrator opens documents with in a state they were saved few hours before.

v.29.3.1

Anshul_Saini

Community Manager

Hi Rum27,

Thank you for sharing your experience with us. We understand how frustrating it can be to lose work due to crashes, and we truly appreciate you bringing this to our attention.

We’ve captured your feedback and shared it with our product team, who are actively working on improving the auto-recovery function in Illustrator. Please stay tuned for updates as we continue refining this feature.

That being said, auto-recovery is not always guaranteed, especially for complex or large files. As Monika often advises, regularly saving backups is the best way to prevent data loss—making it a habit can save you a lot of time and frustration.

Additionally, we highly recommend submitting crash reports whenever Illustrator crashes. These reports provide valuable insights that help our team diagnose and fix issues more efficiently.

Best,

Anshul Saini

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