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How to retrieve an older version of an AI file - saved file corrupted

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
February 13, 2017
7 replies
38848 views

Hi,

I worked on a piece of artwork for weeks, I had a photograph as the second from bottom layer and used higher level layers to create shapes to build a new version of the photograph. It was very complicated. When I next went in to work on it, the file had become one layer on the artwork panel, on outline view it showed just one box with x lines across it - to show the original photograph and all of the upper layers were not on the art panel. I can see the layers on the layers panel, They are marked to show they are visible and the photograph is supposed to be invisible. When I click the top layer to see it, in the layer panel the whole artwork disappears from the screen.

I have forwarded to adobe support who have said that I must have merged the layers and they can not do anything about it. I have not merged the layers!

I am stuck and hoped that someone on here may have a good idea about what to do?

Is there a way I can find an older version of the file somewhere on my computer, I have Windows 10.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Ashutosh_Mishra

Hi all,

We’re sorry to hear about your experience. We understand how frustrating file corruption can be. We’re currently investigating these issues so that they can be fixed in future releases to provide a better user experience.

We’re hopeful that suggestions shared by Jacob have helped you. In case you are still facing this issue, we would request you to share the following details:

Did the app crash while saving the document? If not, how much time has elapsed since last Save and the Crash?

Did you see the Document Recovery Dialog on Relaunch of Ai? Did you select OK or Cancel? If you canceled, why did you cancel? Is it because you already had the original document saved? What happened when you recovered the file using OK? Was recovered file workable?

Did you turn off PDF compatibility(on the save window) while saving .Ai file?

Were you saving the document to any network location? If yes, which kind of network (e.g., regular SMB based shared folder or FTP or DropBox/Box, etc.)?

Were there linked assets in the file? If yes, were they saved locally or on a network?

Which tools were you working on before the Crash/document corruption?

Do you have some 3rd party plugins? And if yes, please share the details.

Would it be possible for you to share:
A. Corrupted Document
B. Font list on the system
C. Printer List

All this information would help us understand the root cause and help you accordingly.

Regards,

Ashutosh

S

Salma begum34109907ulln

Participant

the vary nice app and editing video for adobe community

Ashutosh_MishraCorrect answer

Inspiring

Hi all,

We’re sorry to hear about your experience. We understand how frustrating file corruption can be. We’re currently investigating these issues so that they can be fixed in future releases to provide a better user experience.

We’re hopeful that suggestions shared by Jacob have helped you. In case you are still facing this issue, we would request you to share the following details:

Did the app crash while saving the document? If not, how much time has elapsed since last Save and the Crash?

Did you see the Document Recovery Dialog on Relaunch of Ai? Did you select OK or Cancel? If you canceled, why did you cancel? Is it because you already had the original document saved? What happened when you recovered the file using OK? Was recovered file workable?

Did you turn off PDF compatibility(on the save window) while saving .Ai file?

Were you saving the document to any network location? If yes, which kind of network (e.g., regular SMB based shared folder or FTP or DropBox/Box, etc.)?

Were there linked assets in the file? If yes, were they saved locally or on a network?

Which tools were you working on before the Crash/document corruption?

Do you have some 3rd party plugins? And if yes, please share the details.

Would it be possible for you to share:
A. Corrupted Document
B. Font list on the system
C. Printer List

All this information would help us understand the root cause and help you accordingly.

Regards,

Ashutosh

F

Froldfield

Participant

Hi! I've got a relatively small illustrator file that when I open with the latest version of Illustrator CC is coming up with "Acrobat PDF File Format is having difficulties. Expected dict object". I think it has corrupted and I do not have a back up of this file. I was working from a WD external hard drive at the time. The file looks to still contain data e.g. 2225KB. From opening it in a txt file it looks like end of the file hasnt saved e.g. missing this chunk of code (see bottom of post). I have tried to take this example code from a clean illustrator and copy across to a copy of the corrupted file but not had any luck. Also tried placing the illustrator in clean illustrator files etc. I can still see the raster image preview of the data and can see from the txt editor that there still looks to be some of the data there. If there is any chance someone could help recover this I would greatly appreciate it!

Link to file

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QfiPWEig_KmfC1jGMGxHv3j4uSiK8KTM/view?usp=sharing

endstream endobj 34 0 obj [33 0 R] endobj 44 0 obj <</CreationDate(D:20200730194110+01'00')/Creator(Adobe Illustrator 24.2 \(Windows\))/ModDate(D:20200730194111+01'00')/Producer(Adobe PDF library 15.00)/Title(ICL_ICREC_Concept Review Summary_Recovery)>> endobj xref 0 45 0000000004 65535 f 0000000016 00000 n 0000000147 00000 n 0000043826 00000 n 0000000000 00000 f 0000043877 00000 n 0000000000 00000 f 0000538210 00000 n 0000000000 00000 f 0000000000 00000 f 0000000000 00000 f 0000000000 00000 f 0000000000 00000 f 0000000000 00000 f 0000000000 00000 f 0000000000 00000 f 0000538283 00000 n 0000538727 00000 n 0000539931 00000 n 0000605520 00000 n 0000671109 00000 n 0000736698 00000 n 0000802287 00000 n 0000867876 00000 n 0000873873 00000 n 0000939462 00000 n 0001005051 00000 n 0001070640 00000 n 0001136229 00000 n 0001201818 00000 n 0001267407 00000 n 0001332996 00000 n 0000000000 00000 f 0000045205 00000 n 0001398585 00000 n 0000044274 00000 n 0000045505 00000 n 0000045392 00000 n 0000044428 00000 n 0000044643 00000 n 0000044691 00000 n 0000045276 00000 n 0000045307 00000 n 0000045540 00000 n 0001398610 00000 n trailer <</Size 45/Root 1 0 R/Info 44 0 R/ID[<D65442E98B41D54B8DA06DB2BB3D433E><ED0657387BFC1943A7969B6A03F5EF56>]>> startxref 1398825 %%EOF

Monika Gause

Community Expert

An AI file most of the time consists of two forks: an AIfork and a PDF fork. In your case the PDF fork seems corrupt, so placing in a new AI file won't work.

You could try and open it in Acrobat, perhaps it can repair the PDF part. This won't give you back the AI part. Also: do this with a duplicate of the file.

You can also try and send it to ShareWithAi@adobe.com for investigation. Please include a link to this thread.

F

Froldfield

Participant

Hi Monika, thank you for replying! I tried opening thorugh Acrobat but no success. I've sent a version of it to file@adobe.co.uk but in the mean time I'll just start rebuilding the file.

Thanks for your advice!

T

themelancholyof02

Participant

Hi all, I'm facing a very bad problem right now.

I recently cleaned my Mac because I was running out of space on Photoshop and Illustrator and because of this they weren't working properly. I backed up all my files onto my hard drive, a orange LaCie, (or so I thought) and used CleanMyMac to make space. Only afterwards did I realize all my files on my hard drive had gotten corrupted (I don't know if this had to do with CleanMyMac) and since I erased all the original files I have no other backups of my work. I'm not normally someone who cleans their laptop for this exact reason, my lost work amounts to around five years because it's not just the .AI or .PSD but the .JPGS too.

When I try to place a corrupt file into a new Illustrator file or a new Indesign File, it still doesn't work. When I tried placing it into the new Illustrator file the prompt, "The file '____' is in a format which cannot be placed." appeared and when placed in Indesign the prompt "Cannot place this file. No filter found for requested operation." appeared.
If I try double clicking the file to open, it won't register.
If I drag to the program to open the prompt "File can't be found" appears.

If I drag to desktop then drag to program open the prompt "The file '___' is in an unknown format and cannot be opened" appears.

I don't know what to do, these files are very important to me, being that the files are from 5 years of work. Please any help would be great

Rick E Johnson

Inspiring

Hi, best of luck with this! A few things come to mind. When the files were on your Mac, were they by chance in the Creative Cloud Files directory? If so, there may be some backup versions on the Adobe cloud.

Did your files have filename extensions? If not, it's possible they just lost their Mac creator and file type attributes, and adding a filename extension could bring them back.

If you look at the file sizes, do they seem about right? If the file sizes are very small or especially if zero bytes, the data is probably irretrievably gone.

If you haven't used your Mac much since cleaning files off of it, there's a reasonable chance a disc recovery service could restore deleted files that have not been overwritten with new data.

Since you're using a Mac, I highly recommend getting a dedicated backup drive and using Apple's Time Machine utility to make regular backups. It's very easy to use, and I've found it to be a lifesaver after ruining or deleting something I shouldn't have, or even restoring an entire external drive after a hardware failure.

Best of luck!

ashjef

Participant

Hi Rick,

I was hoping you might help me with a similar problem.

I recently accidentally deleted my data off of my hard drive; I managed to recover it, but Illustrator won't open one of the files. The file says it contains 1.2MB, but I've tried converting it and it always says that the file does not contain any data.

I'm hoping you can offer advice on how to recover my file as I really need it for a class assignment.

Thanks, Ash

TBDesigner

Participant

I have a flash drive with a lot of important illustrator files on it. All of a sudden, they're all corrupt and will not open. Some of the PDFs are doing the same thing. Is there any way to fix this?

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Copy them to your hard drive - will they open?

How's their file size?

TBDesigner

Participant

Nope.....it still says it’s corrupt if I copy it to my hard drive.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

And... Talk to someone about backups. The disks in computers fail often, it isn't a wild unpredictable thing. Just consider: how would I work tomorrow if my computer didn't work and everything in it was lost. Part of every business planning.

Jacob Bugge

Community Expert

Test Screen Name,

Just consider: how would I work tomorrow if my computer didn't work and everything in it was lost. Part of every business planning.

I believe that is the best way I have seen of describing it concisely; and it goes beyond business planning, also covering every other use.

Jacob Bugge

Community Expert

Susanne,

You have no version saved elsewhere/under a different name (always recommended)?

I am unsure what System Restore (or what it is called) can do in such a case.

Concerning the current file, you may try to create a new document and File>Place the (PDF contents, if any, of the) corrupted one to see how much may be rescued that way.

Here are some websites where you can see whether it can rescue the actual file, and if it can, you may pay for a subscription to have it done,

http://www.recoverytoolbox.com/buy_illustrator.html

http://markzware.com/adobe-software/fix-illustrator-file-unknown-error-occurred-pdf2dtp-file-recovery/

http://www.illustrator.fixtoolbox.com/

As far as I remember, the first one is for Win and the second one is for Mac, while the third one should be for both.

Here are a few pages about struggling with it yourself:

http://daxxter.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/how-to-recover-a-corrupted-illustrator-ai-file/

http://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/troubleshoot-damaged-illustrator-files.html

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/500/cpsid_50032.html

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/500/cpsid_50031.html

http://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/enable-content-recovery-mode-illustrator.html

S

susanneelaineAuthor

Participant

Thank you Jacob, I didn't save it anywhere else, but I always will from now on. I have used the file - place into a new file which is the best solution so far. All the layers are on one level, but at least the artwork is on top and visible.

Thanks,

rcraighead

Legend

FWIW… I save all active jobs to a local, synced Dropbox folder. Dropbox offers multi-version backups. It is quick and easy to download an earlier version of the same file from my Dropbox online account. I find this easier and more full-proof than remembering to "version" a file locally.

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