Shapes Expanded Message on open

[chrise78247958]

At work we use Illustrator 2020 because of some IT and systems guidlines. We create templates and then send artwork to outside vendors to populate various copy on the files. Vendor returns files to us to check accuracy. Unsure what version each vendor uses as we work with 100s of vendors each year.

We use a pattern brush to create this ribbon (top image below). Occasionally we get files back from vendors and "Shapes Expanded" message when we open them. This ribbon is now expanded into multiple shapes (bottom image below). When we copy/paste this ribbon from another file, save, close and then reopen the same "Shapes Expanded" message appears and the pasted ribbon is now expanded. Only when we save as will the ribbon stay a pattern brush.

Why does this happen? How can we avoid brushes expanding?

[Mylenium · Accepted solution]

You answered your own question already - when you work with different vendors the files get "tainted" by saving to different versions and then things fall apart because AI does not update some internal data structures, possibly with another level of messiness added with the embedded PDF data and people using different tools and versions, too. Pretty much nothing you can do about it. If doing a "save as" does the trick, then simply make it a standard procedure and from a security standpoint that would be advisable to begin with, aynway. You never know what has been done to those files and the AI format is not a robust file format that can easily be damaged and tampered with in teh first place.

Mylenium