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davidfox@charter.net
Inspiring
November 5, 2018
Answered

Unknown error occurs when trying to open ANY .ai file

  • November 5, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 15556 views

All of a sudden this morning,I cannot open ANY .ai file - I get the message "An unknown error has occurred". I can open .eps files without problems.

I have tried  opening files on both my local hard drive and on our server - same result.

I did update Illustrator this morning after receiving notification about the update, but the problem occurred BEFORE i did the update - I decided to try updating to see if it would fix the issue, but no luck.

I have tried quitting Illustrator and restarting the computer, but no luck.

Please help - I am dead in the water if I can't open my files.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer davidfox@charter.net

    Please contact support.

    Contact Customer Care

    You need to be logged in and at the bottom of the page there is a chat option (unless you have a team license)


    Monika,

    Just wanted you to know that Customer Care fixed the problem - once we trashed the Preferences folder, the problem went away. I was kind of thinking it might end up being that because in my previous experiences with InDesign when I have encountered odd problems, trashing the Prefs has fixed those problems. Luckily, my use of Illustrator is fairly basic and I don't have any elaborate settings in my preferences.

    1 reply

    D
    davidfox@charter.netAuthor
    Inspiring
    November 5, 2018

    One more thing - I just tried opening some of the .ai files in Photoshop and they open without problems. Of course, this does me no good because I loose the vector graphic format if I try and save them. But it does show the issue is with Illustrator and not the files.

    Monika Gause
    Monika Gause
    Community Expert
    November 5, 2018

    Is a printer connected, set up as default printer and turned on?

    Are your files on a server? If so, please move them to the harddisk before opening.

    Monika Gause
    Monika Gause
    Community Expert
    November 5, 2018

    I turned it on but this did not solve the problem. It is my only printer so it is the default. And there is nothing in the printer queue.

    Furthermore, I have been working with the same setup since the beginning of the year without any issues, so I expected before trying that it would not solve the problem.

    Seems to me like a deeper issue within Illustrator - perhaps corruption in  preference files or something like that?


    Changing anything might irritate Illustrator. Can you try and set up the printer as the default? This has helped people in the past.

    Illustrator needs a printer when opening and saving files.

    The files have not been moved around?

    Are there linked images in them? Where are the files located?

    Are all fonts checked and OK?

    Do you have any plugins installed?

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