DAYS of work lost because of "text import options"

[Splaticuss]

I am about to lose my mind, I've been working on a design for days, this morning I wake up, go to the computer to keep working, suddenly illustrator crashes, which causes my whole computer to crash immediately after (something that seems to happen quite often since I purchased Adobe CC, and yes I did run the cleaner tool before installing).

Anyways, after the restart, I try to open the file and it shows me a "Text import options" screen and a blank file....

Ever since I purchased Adobe CC (which was very expensive to me) I've been having nothing but trouble, and now with problem, I've lost DAYS of hard work (unless a solution is found)

What do I do??? I'm literally panicking at the moment.

[Doug A Roberts]

can you access an earlier system state to retrieve a version of your file? (i.e. Time Machine (mac) or Previous Versions (win))

[Splaticuss]

Unfortunately no, there is no previous image available

[Splaticuss]

Oddly enough, I can still see the thumbnail of the file when opening Illustrator, but when trying to open it it displays the text error message

[Doug A Roberts]

in that case, what happens if you try and open it in acrobat?

[Splaticuss]

"An error occurred while converting"

[Jacob Bugge]

Sam,

One thing often tried first is 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-recover...

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

[Im_pissed]

Hey, I dont know if you figured it out but this just happened to me on a project I have been working on for about a week. If you figured it out please share.

[Monika Gause]

When that dialog box pops up, most probably the file is gone for good. You can still try if Acrobat opens it.

If it doesn't, try the links posted by Jacob

For next time: Make backups. A lot of them.