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So I was working on a project for the past 2 hours and I went to open another document for reference and then the file I had been working on just suddenlyclosed I have autosave on but it didn't seem to work properly and instead of an ai file I have a tmp file that I can't open in illustrator. Any way to fix this?
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Hi there! I know this was asked over a year ago, but the same thing happened to me and I wanted to offer my solution in case anyone finds this thread like I did.
Illustrator crashed and I was also left with a tmp file. I opened my tmp file in Acrobat, and all my work was there. From Acrobat, I saved the file out as a pdf, then opened the pdf in Illustrator and the day was saved!
Sorry this is late but this was happening to me and it also didn't work opening it on Acrobat, it was a blank document with some text. I changed the file ending from tmp to ai and it opened perfectly on Illustrator.
"Thank you! This worked for me. I just opened the tmp file straight into Illustrator and it worked!"
This solution worked for me as well, Illustrator opened the tmp files with no problem!
My case was: I had lost some versions of my Illustrator work file, probably because of synchronising problems of Google Drive, on MacOS Ventura 13.2.1. (M1), because the location is now changed of the Drive folder (it became kind of a cloud HD). I'm just writing this, in case someone had also problems like me,
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Hi there,
Sorry to hear about your experience. Would you mind sharing version of OS and Illustrator? TMP file will not help in any way to recover the document.
Please check out help article https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/how-to/recover-files.html about file recovery in Adobe Illustrator.
If Data Recovery options were turned on and you did not get any prompt to recover the file, then I'd recommend resetting the Adobe Illustrator preferences once. Please follow the instruction on help article https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/setting-preferences.html#setting_illustrator_preferences
**Please note that resetting preferences will remove all the custom settings and Illustrator will launch with default settings. You can also take a backup of the folders in case you want to. Location is mentioned in the article.
Looking forward to your response.
Regards,
Ashutosh
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Hi there! I know this was asked over a year ago, but the same thing happened to me and I wanted to offer my solution in case anyone finds this thread like I did.
Illustrator crashed and I was also left with a tmp file. I opened my tmp file in Acrobat, and all my work was there. From Acrobat, I saved the file out as a pdf, then opened the pdf in Illustrator and the day was saved!
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Saved my life, thank you.
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Thank you! This worked for me. I just opened the tmp file straight into Illustrator and it worked!
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Same here! I just renamed the .tmp file as an .ai and opened it. 30 minutes worth of work saved!
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You're a saint. This worked! And it kept all my layers and guides etc in tact. Thank you!
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How are yall opening or maybe my files are corrupt or blank because they won't open in ANY program😩😢
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Sorry this is late but this was happening to me and it also didn't work opening it on Acrobat, it was a blank document with some text. I changed the file ending from tmp to ai and it opened perfectly on Illustrator.
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this just saved my day, thank u sm!
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amazing tip thanks a lot 🙏🏼🙏🏼
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Thank you so much. Your suggestion saved my lot of time and efforts.
God bless you!
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Awesome! thanks this helped!
I was able to just change the file extenstion from .tmp to .ai and it worked with everything still there even junk i had outside of my artboard! thanks!
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Same for me,
- Si vous êtes sur iMac ouvrez votre fichier avec votre visualizeur d'apperçu.
- Puis enregistrez simplement une copie du document en question en PDF.
- Une fois celà fais, ouvrez votre PDF à l'aide d'Ai.
Et voici votre travail sauf.
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"Thank you! This worked for me. I just opened the tmp file straight into Illustrator and it worked!"
This solution worked for me as well, Illustrator opened the tmp files with no problem!
My case was: I had lost some versions of my Illustrator work file, probably because of synchronising problems of Google Drive, on MacOS Ventura 13.2.1. (M1), because the location is now changed of the Drive folder (it became kind of a cloud HD). I'm just writing this, in case someone had also problems like me, recently... There was no crash or problem reported while working, neither when I next time opened the file. There were "just" some parts lost of my work within the file, and all of sudden there were many tmp files in my folder, where the original file is placed as well. And there were no files at all in the DataRecovery folders of Illustrator. I suggest you using the CC cloud saving options, rather than working on Google Drive... I'm gonna change this saving method now as well.

