Opening files created in a newer version of Illustrator

nice

jh

OR,
Contact other Adobe Illustrator Users and initiate a class action law suit forcing Abobe to provide translation support for it's desktop versions.

Adobe should know that forcing customers to contact clients to ask them to downsave a file is often impossible, difficult, and or puts the desktop user in an uncomfortable posution.

In reality you'll usually have to find a friend and trouble them to help you.

This worked for me.  I right clicked on the .eps file and I selected "Convert to Adobe PDF".  Once opened I saved as PDF. 

I then opened the PDF in Illustrator (I'm still working on CS6) and it opened up with one error "An unknown shading type was encountered." I clicked OK and the file opened up just fine.

Hope you guys have the same luck as me.

Thank YOU [Scott]!

If you open it with Acrobat Pro, it will open as if it were a PDF. Then just go to File > Export > PostScript > Encapsulated PostScript.  As soon as you choose "Encapsulated PostScript," you will be offered a chance to Save As an .eps file. If you save it in the same file you stored or received it in, it will override the original .eps file as an older version that you can use.  Note that if the original file was an .ai document, it will still save it as an .eps, then you would just use your older Illustrator to save THAT file to override the original .ai document. 

Some .eps files may not export perfectly, especially if whomever created it used a lot of the most recent tools on it, but most of them will.  Good luck!

Also you can use https://cloudconvert.org/ it helped me.

You can open the file by placing it in a new document and then saving it as you like.

Try opening the file in Acrobat Pro.

Then "Save As..." a PDF and open the PDF with Illustrator 11. It may or may not work.

You can or maybe can't open... depending on versions...  but there will be restrictions and maybe errors...

You can't open a file created in a version of Illustrator later than the one you're using.

You can, however, have the file saved for an earlier version so that you could open it in CS.

In the Illustrator Options dialog box which appear while saving, there's a pulldown menu for Version. You can select Illustrator CS from there. This, of course, must be done on the machine with the newer version. If you don't have access to that you could ask whoever does to resave it for CS for you.