Illustrator crushed while saving. Got a 7gb TMP file that I can't open.

[Mahir5C36]

Hello, 

I was saving a document which I was working on in Illustrator as a pdf. It got 160 artboards, when the saving got to 160/160 it crashed and the pdf saved as a TMP file. I can't open it with Acrobat. If I open it in Illustrator it opens with blank 420x594mm artboards (the file had 148x210mm artboards).

I think part of the data should be there, the TMP file has 7.94gb, the amount which the pdf was supposed to have. While in illustrator Home tab, I can see the artboards in the ”Recent” section but they dissapear when I open it. 

Any ideas what I can do?

[Monika Gause]

Crashing while saving is the worst possible moment to crash.

Do you have a backup of the file?

Time Machine perhaps?

The Illustrator team can try and recover your file, but actually there is not a lot of hope. @Anshul_Saini could you perhaps help?

[Mahir5C36]

No Time Machine. I have the original document which I was working in, but I lost around 8 hours of work. I was hoping that there was a way to save the TMP File. I don't get why it is 8GB but doesnt contain anything. 

I also had autosave activated but there is nothing, it sometimes turns off automatically for whatever reason. 

[Mahir5C36]

This is how the TMP file shows in the ”recent” tab of illustrator, so there surely is some data on it.

[Ton Frederiks]

If it gets too complex, data recovery will turn off.

I think it would be good to split up your Illustrator file in smaller parts (160 artboards is a lot!).

[Monika Gause]

Autosave only exists for Cloud documents. You are perhaps referring to File Recovery. That is not Autosave and should never be used as such.

Take this incident as a sign and develop a backup strategy now.

You have to regularly save your files

Save early

Save often

Save different versions. Within those 8 hours with an important document there should be a couple of versions and backups of same document.

Illustrator won't do that for you. You have to save your documents. If you are afraid because of the disk space: you can delete a couple of backups and versions in the evening.

An additional harddisk is always cheaper than having to rebuild a file. Don't let it happen to you again.

[Mahir5C36]

You are right, I will do this from now on. The document I was working in was previosuly saved in Cloud, so it was a cloud document. Thats why I thought autosave will, well, save it on the go.

[Anshul_Saini]

Hi @Mahir5C36,

Thanks for reaching out. Would you mind sharing the 8GB TMP file download link here or via DM? I will try my best to recover it.

As Ton said, file recovery gets turned off for complex or huge-size files for both offline & cloud and needs to be turned off. This is done so Ai doesn't slow down and there is no interruption in the user workflow.

Looking forward to the file.

Thanks,

Anshul Saini

[Mahir5C36]

Hello, 

Thank you for answering! 

This is the file. I've changed the format to ”.ai” by changing the name but I didn't do anything else to it.

I appreciate the help a lot!

Here is the link:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1UAn9EvlUzUuio_fuj-aWdRpTKPyiH9-q?usp=share_link 

[Anshul_Saini]

Thanks for sharing the file & patience. We tried but couldn't recover the temp file. Major data points are missing; only artboard 160 is fully intact.

Regards,

Anshul Saini