How to open a .aid file on a mac

[michaelp16701650]

Hi,

I was just wondering how to open the .aid recovery files created by illustrator when data recovery is setup.

Thanks.

[Icon Creative · Accepted solution]

Hi

I had a problem today with a file I saved. It was a very important file with logo concepts for an important client.
I closed the saved file and tried opening it a little while later, but I got an error message that the file was unknown.

I tried searching for a recovery file in the DataRecovery folder, but there wasn't a recent one.

Luckily I had a Time Machine backup and went to the DataRecovery file and found the .aid recovery file. I checked this by opening it in TextEdit and searching for the image links that I had used.

I then tried searching the internet for a solution on how to open the .aid file, however I couldn't find one anywhere anywhere.

I contacted Adobe directly and they told me; "Unfortunately it's not possible". What is the point of having a DataRecovery folder if you can't recover the files!!!

Thankfully I discovered a solution!

1. Open the DataRecovery folder.

To check where you're folder is located, open illustrator and go to Preferences/File Handling & Clipboard/DataRecovery.

2. Create a new document in Illustrator and wait for a new .aid file to be created. If it doesn't appear after a few mins, try drawing a few shapes on the page and wait again.

3. Once the new recovery file is created, you need to crash illustrator. I opened Activity Monitor (Mac), found Adobe Illustrator, clicked on it and then chose to 'Force Quit' it.

4. Open the both the new .aid file and the one you need to recover in 'TextEdit'.

5. Copy all the text from the .aid you need to recover and paste it in place of all the text in the new recovery file and then save and close.

6. I then reopened Illustrator and the recovery window appeared. I hit ok and voila, the work I lost was recovered!

Hopefully this works for anyone else with this problem!

[Om Nath Jha]

Hi Allister,

Thanks a lot for the detailed post. I firmly believe it will help many users with similar issue.

Regards,

Om

[clarissad92454039]

Hi,

I lost a recovery file AID now on my desktop that can't opened.

1. The DataRecovery folder doesnt appear in my finder so i dragged it to my desktop.

2. What do you mean "wait"? THe file didnt magically appear

[aioot07]

this is amazing.

it worked, but unfortunately for me, before i got to your response, i had already overwritten my original aid of the file i wanted by stupidly opening another file. i wish there was a way to turn back time.

[Luke Jennings]

If you have a Mac, you can use the Time Machine, which is included with the OS. You just need to plug in an external hard drive.

It automatically makes and saves hourly back-ups of your files.

[Kathryn5CFC]

Genius!! Thank you! I am so glad I found this thread after searching and trying different things for over an hour today!! 

[fabricekazadi]

Hey, It worked perfectly. Thank you so much. 🙂🙂🙂

[joshuae8768730]

still writing unsupported format. though i use notepad

[luiluai]

Absolutely Genius

Did the steps and the file was so large Text/Edit would not copy/paste the text and would crash, but what worked was to rename the lost aid file with the new generated aid number.  MAKE A COPY of the aid file you want to recover into another folder before starting as Illustrator will delete the last file in the log once activated.  Maybe Illustrator will make this step easier, for now... again, genius.

[MPeimbert]

Men! You should get an award for this. You saved me days of work. 

I had the file saved and suddently everything crashed on my Mac (don't know why it didn't appear as saved), when I came back there was no file to reopen and after trying so many times I was about to give up until I found your post. 

Just wanted to add to the point #4 as I also had to copy the 'AIDBTemp' folders to the new recovery file folder. 

BIG THANK YOU!

[Kieran5F9F]

Lost 3 hours worth of work, even though I had been manualy saving.

Tried this exact method and it worked, recovered all my data up until the crash! Life saver, thank you!

[Brooke36160970pjj7]

Smart approach, unfortunately did not work for me.

[defaultwtchl1kfdhfm]

Genio!!!! Gracias por esta solución 🙂