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

[vincentd6087485]

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?

[Jaden36692273ukcq]

Thank you so much!

[lee247903676ycd]

Why can't Adobe just admin it doesn't work and fix it?

[Jaden36692273ukcq]

Hello. Any updates? thank you

[Anubhav M]

Hello @Jaden36692273ukcq,

Thank you for sharing the file with us. Despite attempting to recover from the file, regrettably, there was nothing left to salvage. We understand this may not be the ideal outcome, and we apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Could you confirm if the file was saved on a network, removable drive, or a cloud-synced folder like Google Drive or Dropbox? Storing files in such locations can sometimes lead to corruption issues.

To avoid similar situations in the future, we advise saving multiple copies of your active work locally or saving them as cloud documents.

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any further questions or need assistance. We're here to help.

Anubhav

[defaultyslffg7sa2qd]

Hi, my illustrator file crashed, and I forced quit thinking that it's been saved. But when reopened, the progress was lost and there are no .aid recovery files available, but only .aishm files which cant be opened. 

[Monika Gause]

There are currently more issues with it than have before.

It was never a good idea to rely on it. Better save your work, because the app won't do it for you. And when you have saved, make a backup copy. On an external drive. 

[Aleare Works]

Realmente muy cansada y estresada de tener que rehacer mis trabajos hasta 3 veces porque Illustrator se cuelga al querer guardar, al reiniciar la app no muestra el popup para reportar errores y además tampoco recupera los archivos que estaba trabajando antes que se colgara.

Sinceramente me siento estafada, pago todos los meses por una aplicación que no funciona y me retrasa los trabajos!!!

No me manden mensajes diciéndome que reinicie la computadora, basta!! NECESITO UNA SOLUCIÓN CONCRETA!!!

[HARSHIKA_VERMA]

Hi Aleare Works,

We understand how frustrating it could be, and we apologize for the inconvenience. Would you mind telling us if you get any error message when Illustrator crashes? Please share the version of Illustrator installed on your machine and the details of your operating system. 

Does that happen with all files you're saving?
Have you submitted the crash report?

We will try our best to investigate the issue and help you resolve it.

Thanks,

Harshika

[Kevin McMahon]

Not an improvement - a disaster.  No .aid files to open. Lost hours of work and Illustrator no longer stable (crashed 2 days in a row on new Macbook Pro.) Ugh. 

[Monika Gause]

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@Kevin McMahon  schrieb:

Not an improvement - a disaster.  No .aid files to open. Lost hours of work and Illustrator no longer stable (crashed 2 days in a row on new Macbook Pro.) Ugh. 

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The stability would need to be addressed - the usual suspect would be a computer that doesn't get regular reboots as well as a corrupt preferences file.

I would try that for a start.

But then: file recovery is the icing on the cake when you are saving files regularly AND make backups - preferably on external harddisks. File recovery is not a backup solution and it is not meant to save your files automatically. It will not do either of this reliably.

[Kevin McMahon]

Yeah. To explain a bit more, 28 years of working with Illustrator here (clients include Adobe) and teaching it the entire time as well. Also, working on a new MacBook Pro. Auto-recovery worked fine for the last decade.  This is a new behavior caused by a misguided "improvement" - creating the least stable version of Illustrator I have worked with. 

[StarAG​]

I have reverted back to the previous version which work absolutely fine.

I know errors happens and the company needs to first accept the issue and then address it properly. Till now they haven't accepted it and have been only moving here and there.

They need to do internal diagnosis and rectify the error. Been a long time user of illustrator I have never faced such issue ever. And I have full trust with Adobe but they need to issue a statement regarding this as many others might be facing the same and their work needs to be protected.... its just those people are not complaining or discussing the same here in the forum.

[Deidra_Adams]

I have the same issue with version 29.3. It shows the pop up that it recovered the files, but never opens them. I looked in the location of where to find the files but there are no files with an .ai or .aid extension, just random text files that look like jiberish. The crash happened when I tried to save the file as a CC version. 

[The Hannah]

Hi there!

I was working in Illustrator at my MacBook Pro and then the battery suddelnly turned it off. When I turned it on again (imedietaly) the document was gone, only the old document version was there and could be redone/recovered. But the document that I didn't saved is gone.

Is it possible to get it back?

Have looked at the datarecovery folder and it just have some aishm-files that I dont know what to do with.

Thankful for all help.

Hannah, Sweden.

[Monika Gause]

There have been many issues reported with those files lately. You will most probably not get it back.

It's best to save your files regularly to not get into a situation where you need to rely on file recovery. It's not made for that.

[The Hannah]

I'm very careful with that and always try to save my documents as often as I possibly can. But sometimes thing happends. And therefore these files are nessecary. I don't think people would use this files just for fun, or make recovery just for fun either. These files are needed, and not something you just "rely" on.

[The Hannah]

You can not plan everything.

[The Hannah]

I would rather get a link from you with the threads that mention this, if it's that often that you say it is. Maybe there are some advise there. Feel like I got nothing to loose here.

[Anubhav M]

Hello @The Hannah,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Currently, it's not possible to recover from *.aishm files. We understand this may not be the ideal outcome, and we apologize for any inconvenience caused.

To avoid similar situations in the future, we advise saving multiple copies of your active work locally or saving them as cloud documents.

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any further questions or need assistance. We're here to help.

Anubhav

[Tommy St]

Though not as bad as many others in this thread, I just lost 3 hours of work from Illustrator crashing.

Every time Illustrator has crashed in the past few months, it says it has recovered from a crash and will now open the recovered file, and the has failed to reopen anything except the most recent manual save I've made. This effectively means that the "Automatically Save Recovery Data" is completely useless. I don't know if the issue is that I changed the folder location of the automaticlly saved recovery data or if there was a change in one of the recent updates.

Also, before someone chimes in "that's not how file recovery works" or "you should save more often", please don't. We want it to work a specific way. We are paying hundreds of dollars annually for this software with the idea that the future updates would improve the it and issues that the community calls out would be fixed.

For anyone who wants an acutal solution to this problem try Autosaviour by Astute Graphics. It's a free plugin that automatically saves your file the way you'd expect Illustrator to. I used to turn it off since the automatic saves would interrupt my workflow, but now since the data recovery *does not work* I'm turning it back on again. Better to be briefly interrupted than lose hours of work. Add it to the list of essential plugins that Astute has for Illustrator, filling the gaps that Adobe ignores.

https://astutegraphics.com/plugins/autosaviour

[Miko VIcin]

Thanks a lot for this comment. I really dislike when people say "you should save more often" People don't intentional do not save. We are just engrossed in the work and forget once in a while. It's a feature that should be working perfectly. But it doesn't. It was good before with .aid but they have made it worse. Thank you for the suggestion again. I will try it out

[Monika Gause]

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@Miko VIcin  schrieb:

We are just engrossed in the work and forget once in a while. It's a feature that should be working perfectly. 

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That should not happen. Make it a habit to save.

A feature like this will never be 100% reliable, because that's just not how computers operate. A power outage or a hardware failure can ruin everything at any time. And that's why it's not even sufficient to save regularly. You also have to make backups regularly on external hardware. Not doing so is just not sustainable.

[Tommy St]

Continually telling people to just save more frequently, and save backups of backups, does not address the issue that people are complaining about. Namely, the "auto recovery" in Illustrator does not work right now for a siginificant number of people.

This was not an issue before "auto recovery" was updated to its current state. This *was* how this feature was working. That is what people are having issues with. By refocusing the issue to the users just not saving enough comes across as rude and condecending. I would guess the majority of people on this forum thread are professionals complaining about a feature that doesn't work --you don't need to tell them to just save more.

[Fiamma127]

No, no digas eso. La mayoria somos profesionales, sabemos lo que estamos haciendo y aun asi no es nuestra culpa lo que sucede. Yo hago todo lo que tu dices, guardo manualmente y hago copias de seguridad regulares en hardware externo, pero aun con todo eso muchas veces me he visto en situaciones donde el maldito fallo de adobe me hace perder todo mi trabajo de horas lo haya guardado o no, todo se pierde. Ya no es cosa nuestra el problema es de la empresa por no brindar un buen servicio por el cual ESTAMOS PAGANDO.

[LisaAnnW]

How about having it work AT ALL? Seems to me that if this feature has been built in, it should work like it's intended to work. Also, it's obvious that “save regularly” has been an ongoing issue and that is why it was built into the program. Mine just stopped working.