opening old illustrator files

[ericnow]

Hi Community, I want to open Illustrator (and Macromedia Freehand) files, which are older than 2005 (some files were created in the 90ties). Is there anybody who knows a tool or a trick to do so? I am a user of creatice cloud and no app is working. Thanks in advance, Eric

[Larry G. Schneider]

Do the files have appropriate extensions? 

[ericnow]

Hi Larry, the files were createtd in Origininal Illustrator (and Freehand) and have no ending like .ai oder .fh. Adding manual an ending it does not work.

[Ashutosh_Mishra]

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. I'd suggest trying the plugin suggested in similar discussion https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator/how-do-i-open-freehand-with-illustrator-cs6/td-p/9582711?...

Let us know how it goes. 

Regards,

Ashutosh

[ericnow]

Hi Ashutosh,  thanks a lot. The PlugIn works with FreeHand files 7 and later. FH 5 files unfortunatley are not supported…

[ericnow]

I will try the payed version of Tensais PlugIn. This will help to open a big part of my old files.

[Test Screen Name]

For the Illustrator files, you should just need to add .AI to the file, and open it in Illustrator. 

[ericnow]

only adding ".ai" unfortunately doesn't work

[Ton Frederiks]

What do you see when you open them in a text editor?

The Illustrator files should be readable (if they are not compressed by a utility) like:

%!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0 %%

Creator: Adobe Illustrator(TM) 3.0.1

[ericnow]

Thank you! Thanks, I cannot find any information about the version by opening in Text Edit. 

[meganchi]

I remember when we had to convert a bunch of older Freehand files and to do so, we had to run a very early version of Illustrator, like Illustrator 3.0. After a certain version of Illustrator, we were no longer able to convert Freehand files.

[ericnow]

Thank you! I know a few other users, reporting the same. So I will try the payed version of Tensais PlugIn. A large part of my old data will be opened in this way. Thanks to all here – have a great time.