Premiere Pro 24.5 “Project appears to be damaged”

Where are you saving your project file?

develop the habit of saving more than 1 version of your project, like project_01 project_02 etc...

I always follow this workflow ...

is your project file size 0 ?

try this on a copy of the damaged project file, which is usually used to change to previous versions, but maybe it will work:

zip the project file in 7zip, right click on the project and select extract here under 7zip, then open that file with a text editor. You'll see a bunch of text, but look for <Project ObjectID="1" ClassID="62ad66dd-0dcd-42da-a660-6d8fbde94876" Version="xx">

Change the version number to 1 and save the file. Then right click the file again and select add to archive under 7zip. Change the format type to gzip and change the file name to whatever you want with the extension .prproj.

ever since updating to 24.5 I've gotten the "project appears to be damaged" error everytime i close out of premiere and try to reopen the project.

By @bransynsmith

Long shot: What happen if you create a brand new project and simply import the project file that apperas to be damaged into the new project? Sometime that will do the trick, but not always. Worth trying.

I think @Peru Bob may be correct regarding that the project file is located on an external drive.

Are the project files on an external drive?

Delete the Media Cache and Media Cache files:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/faq-how-to-clear-your-media-cache-in-30-seconds-in-premiere-pro-2020/m-p/11017257/thread-id/260446?page=1

Then try creating a new project and import the old one into it.

I'm sorry that this is happening. It is advised not to update Premiere while you are currently working on a project.