Affinity Designer file is corrupted suddenly

[Canterslowly]

@Pšenda sorry I've just read your full message.  I will try copying and opening it elsewhere.  Often the thumbnail shows half of the image ok and the other half black! 

[Pšenda]

10 minutes ago, Canterslowly said:

@Pšenda - I get "this file cannot be opened as it is corrupt" or words to that effect. 

I'm sorry, I confused it with a message from @dudu. The answers of two users are intertwined 🙂

If the message says about a corrupted file, it will really be corrupted. The procedure with possible rescue of a damaged file is its use in APublisher, when some of the checks required for standard opening are probably not performed, and the content can be used at least in part.

 

[Canterslowly]

I  have a new problem tonight.  A design I was working on has saved until a certain point, then after adding more elements to the design I had an error message when I tried to do my final save.  I've attached the bad file and screenshot.  I can still open both the original file and a copy I made but neither show a thumbnail in my file folder - only the Affiinity logo.  In my preview at the side of the file folder, the thumbnail does show.  No need to repair the file for me, I can continue with my additions and re-save (hopefully).

Mirror image with bird.afdesign

[Canterslowly]

@carl123 I wonder if you could take a look at the file I posted on 28th December 2021 please when you get a chance.  I did manage to recover an old version and continue with it but I'm really trying to get to the bottom of the corrupt files etc that I've had over the last year.

I work on an MSI laptop.  Last year I had loads of corrupt files and eventually the SSD had to be replaced because it failed.  When the new SSD was put in, I went through all my files and deleted corrupt files.
However, I've continued to find files that can't be opened - no photographs, no documents - only design files.  I nearly always saved my design in Affinity Designer first, then make a JPEG of it to print from.  The JPEGs were fine but the Affinity files were corrupt.  
I bought a USB a few months' ago and now save my AD file on the hard drive first, then again on the USB, then make my JPEGs and save them too.  
I'm still finding new files that are corrupted on my hard drive but they are not corrupt on the USB so I can bring them back into AD and save them again on the hard drive.
My friend who gifted the laptop to me checked it over today and thinks the hard drive is performing well.  I did a clean install of all Affinity products last night but still have a new file I can't get into from the hard drive, but it's OK on the USB.

All of the above doesn't apply to the file I loaded on 28th December and is the first time I've come across that problem.  I loaded it onto the Facebook group and a very helpful chap suggested that files I'd used in making the design had been lost after I'd saved it.  I wondered if this could be photographs that I'd clipped to shapes (textures) because I did have a shuffle round and separated my texture files depending on where they came from because I wanted to ensure I was within licensing guidelines with them all.   
I'm asking about this in case it is some other type of file that's gone missing.  My friend thought of .dll files but I felt they would be mentioned in an error message.

I have been through all my saved files, that I could get into, and taken all the texture photos out, then re-saved so that I've still got the design/shapes and can add textures next time I use the design.

I use a lot of scrapbook kits which are a collection of .png and .jpg files and am finding elements within the kits are also corrupt. The thumbnails often show half of it with the element (ie a flower) and half is black.

I also make a lot of Asset files which contain either elements that I've made myself or a collection from a scrapbook kit.  These also have corrupt elements within them.  They appear to look OK on the asset panel but when I drag them onto the canvas there's just a bounding box and nothing else.

It's very frustrating and maybe nothing that you can help with but I remain hopeful.   

PS:  I have picked up a few ideas from this thread - ie saving to a different name instead of just doing a re-save, and the way to retrieve work from a corrupt file.  

I've attached 3 other files that I've found recently.  

More Florals may be OK.afdesign Chickens and Flowers 2.afdesign Sakura 2 Repeat Pattern - not for resale.afdesign

[carl123]

@Canterslowly

The 3 files you uploaded have all being recovered and are attached

The Chickens and Flowers files was a bit strange. You uploaded a 48.71MB file but when recovered it was a massive 1.2GB.  By resaving it a few times I have managed to get it down to 732MB but it still seems massive compared to the original.  If you copy the 2 Artboards in that document to a new file it will reduce a lot more (down to 176MB) but I uploaded the 732MB file just in case Affinity support want to analyse it to see what it contains that makes it so big now.

 

11 hours ago, Canterslowly said:

@carl123 I wonder if you could take a look at the file I posted on 28th December 2021 please when you get a chance.  I did manage to recover an old version and continue with it but I'm really trying to get to the bottom of the corrupt files etc that I've had over the last year.

It opens and saves fine for me, so not sure why it would not save for you

As regards why you are getting so many corruptions I don't know. I notice that you use symbols a lot which I don't, so I can't say how reliable that part of the software is, maybe others can comment on that or Affinity support may be able to delve deeper with you into the issues you are having.  

EDIT: On submitting this post the forum software appears to have renamed the Chicken and Flowers file (adding some numbers at the front) it was not me so you can just ignore that mysterious filename - the file still downloads OK

 

 

More Florals may be OK-recovered.afdesign Sakura 2 Repeat Pattern - recovered.afdesign 493743013_ChickensandFlowers2-recovered.afdesign

[Canterslowly]

@carl123 thank you for looking into these so quickly.  I will download them later today and look into why the chickens one might be so large.  Sometimes I will put 3 artboards in one file to try the repeat patterns on - one with the original, one with 4 copies of the original to see if the patterns match plus one with original elements which I use to built the pattern in the first place.  I never check file size but having had comments about massive files on the facebook group and thought it wouldn't be a problem. Perhaps I could use the rasterise feature more often? I believe that reduces file sizes.  

How would I attract the attention of Affinity support please?  

Thank you once again. 

[carl123]

Just now, Canterslowly said:

How would I attract the attention of Affinity support please?  

First you need to find a unicorn egg then smash it with Thor's hammer and burn the pulverised eggs shells in the fires of Hades, the resulting incense will attract them.

Alternatively, you could just wait to see if/when they see this thread. But bear in mind they have a lot of threads to catch up on after the holidays, so the unicorn egg route would be the quickest option.

[OPCCdesigner]

Hi, I have the same problem. i need to amend the attached file and it is saying that it is corrupted. I have changed file name but this has not worked.

Any help much appreciated as I am up against a tight deadline.

Patrick 

[carl123]

32 minutes ago, OPCCdesigner said:

i need to amend the attached file

@OPCCdesigner

No file was attached

[gem2999]

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18gb7at8hQoljRElWuIroYB865cAv5ohp?usp=sharing

Could you help me please? I have the message " file appears to be corrupted". 

Edited February 13, 2022 by gem2999

[Canterslowly]

After many, many problems with corrupt files, and seeking advice on this forum and the facebook Affinity Designer group, I hope I've solved the problem by removing all saved files from my laptop and putting them onto a 4tb external drive.  I didn't know that file size/amount slowed down performance and that this may lead to background saving being compromised.  I was alerted to this when @carl123 mentioned how big my files were.  

[Folkes]

My latest  document (uni work) opens, but it wont allow me to add pages or save? Any ideas? I have opened other large projects and they are operating fine, it appears as the project may be corrupted.

 

Rob

[Old Bruce]

8 hours ago, Folkes said:

My latest  document (uni work) opens, but it wont allow me to add pages or save? Any ideas?

The title of this thread says it is about Designer. Designer cannot add Pages. Not sure about the inability to save.

[alex_hacker]

Hi there,
I am new to the forum and hope you can help me.

Is there a solution for the corrupted files?

My students are working on a large project and now the file is suddenly corrupted,

greetings
Alex

[Wosven]

1 hour ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Somedoc-20220226-01.afdesign, Somedoc-20220226-02.afdesign

Instead of writting dates (the Explorer or Finder can display last modified date in a column, and order by it), versioning (v1, v2, v3, v4....) should suffice.

[Wosven]

59 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

somewhere else (at least on macOS) the timestamp shows the time of the copy.

But even in another place, v10 will be bigger than v5.

 

[edit] And if it's for backup, I don't look at the modification date, only version.  I order by date to get faster to the last version, since it's usually one ofthe last modified/saved. If I need to work from a different emplacement, I update the version when doing a "save as" or after the copy, modifying the file's name, to avoid confusion. [/edit]

Edited February 27, 2022 by Wosven

[v_kyr]

38 minutes ago, Wosven said:

But even in another place, v10 will be bigger than v5.

You mean by the version number (?), since file size not necessarily if I refactor and optimize things inside files (like removing layers, combining things etc.).

However, saving often and continiously -with including a timestamp or file version indicator- is always a good thing to do in order to deal with and prevent possible data losts. When working with multiple persons (teams) on files it's mandantory to keep some own history/backups here for sureness. - Ideally here in such team scenarios, some setup and in the background running/event listening OS monitoring process would then automate that sort of backup saving task, aka triggering changes and new file creations (by file extensions etc.) and on any occurence performs then a timestamp based file renaming & copying/moving to backup storage place.

Usually the Affinity file format itself is internally slightly modeled after an incremental contents backup like system scheme, but as we often see here in the forum, there are still situations possible where that scheme doesn't work always flawlessly on saving to different storage places.

[Wosven]

16 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

You mean by the version number (?)

Yes, the version number, not the file's size, since it can be different, like once you delete the image(s) that was/were used as template(s) to redraw something, etc.

18 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

When working with multiple persons (teams)

If they think to create new version, that's already good. But they won't always think of modifying the timestamp if you wrote it in the file name. (People tend to choose the simplest or laziest way... and I do it when working on simple files that won't take hours.)

Number version are easier, and since the time I worked with QXD, it's enough to keep files and reverse to an older one when one is corrupted.

 

You can have servers and their backup, or/and also use oneDrive or other services/apps depending of the OS.

All will depend of the way we're working. If we only work on a single file each day, timestamps can be added, it won't be so much of a problem or wasted time. But if you work on different files, at some point, the simplest trick do it better without error (erasing the last characters of the file name and incrementing the version is easy, it's common when creating and sending PDF to clients, etc.).

[v_kyr]

45 minutes ago, Wosven said:

If they think to create new version, that's already good. But they won't always think of modifying the timestamp if you wrote it in the file name. (People tend to choose the simplest or laziest way... and I do it when working on simple files that won't take hours.)

Since of the laziness to commonly have for performing such tasks manually, an automated process would be one possible way to overcome with this!

45 minutes ago, Wosven said:

... But if you work on different files, at some point, the simplest trick do it better without error (erasing the last characters of the file name and incrementing the version is easy, it's common when creating and sending PDF to clients, etc.).

Those who do/have develop(ed) software too, may know the "touch" tool, which performs file timestamp modifications on files/folders. Together with some fswatch etc. usage/setup it can be used to automate such processes via some clever made script.

[Wosven]

5 hours ago, LondonSquirrel said:

I think this should be built into Affinity, with a choice of numbering/naming schemes.

Sorry, it's not about you, but about the idea that the apps corrupt too many files while saving that it would need a special implementation to backup each version when saving... 😱 😫 😂 😭

[RB DESIGN]

NOTES FOR: FILE CORRUPTION, " CANNOT SAVE FILES ", " CANNOT OPEN FILES ", OR " DON"T HAVE PERMISSION TO... " ISSUES:

1: FILE CORRUPTION: ///  OS & Application compatibility 

This is probably SOP for most but I started using Affinity products 3+ years ago and had eventually spread my process over separate machines and different Operating Systems. So I first checked to make sure that all versions of Affinity products were operating on the proper OS they were designed for. I also begin making sure to monitor files that migrated between older and newer environments and made sure to save them often and in a more programatic naming system, IE: Date created- file # - and Tag or "Name" ( 2022-001-filename.afdesign ) or ( filename-001-2-14-22.afdesign ) and saving multiple files so that I had at least 3 working versions of the file from different dates/times to insure that I wasn't loosing more work than I was comfortable with at any one time. ( Especially for large files ) 

2 FILE CORRUPTION PT 2:  ///  NEED MORE RAM 

Memory allocation was a critical part in resolving many of the issues for one of my machines. I would recommend purchasing more RAM for your machine if you are having slow performance, crashing, or issues saving your larger files. The inability to manage application and device resources due to a lack of RAM caused all of these issues for one of my machines. Not having enough RAM caused at least three of my files too corrupt, including the the file that prompted my post, because my machine simply ran out of RAM needed to finish processing a save request. On a MAC you can use your Activity Monitor app. from Utilities to view the amount of Memory being used when your applications are running. A good way to tell if you need more RAM is to run the activity monitor while saving a file and if your computer uses all of your memory and/or you start to see it using large amounts of Swap memory you might need more RAM. ( This is of greater importance if you have very little storage left on your machine. IE: 1tb machine with 10 gb available. )

2. " CANNOT SAVE FILES ", " CANNOT OPEN FILES ", OR " DON"T HAVE PERMISSION TO... " ISSUES:   ////   REINSTALL OS. **** WITH CAUTION ****

If step one and two still don't help, and if you use a MAC with the most current OS, you might need to completely wipe your internal drive(s) and install a fresh version of the OS before downloading and installing the most recent version of Affinity software. YES, that's right, COMPLETELY DELETE YOUR HD!  I spent several hours with upper level MAC Support on this. There is apparently an issue surrounding the how the install occurs and how your OS is updated, and how they are tied to you appleid/keychain as this process has changed in the last few MAC OS releases. If done in the correct sequence, No Problem, if not then you get the "Do not have permission to... " or "Cannot Save File" error messages and no amount of sorting through your preferences will change this.

The resolution that finally worked for me was to....

FIRST STEP: Thoroughly back-up/SAVE everything from your machine that you need before doing anything else. Use timemachine or whatever you prefer just make sure you get everything you want saved on some other drive or machine because this resolution requires deleting the entire volume(s).
( *Note if you haven't done this before please read up before trying as you will need to familiarize yourself with using the apple key commands for " Internet Recovery Mode" and" Recovery Mode" and how you will need to use them with DISK FIRST AID; This might take a good deal of time to complete ) (*Please make sure to have all the documentation/Serial#'s you need for application installs ready as you may need them to re-install some applications and their updates. ) 

SECOND STEP: Only after you have created a complete backup of everything you want saved, and I do mean EVERYTHING, please double check... Make sure you are connected to the internet, then use the Disk First Aid Application to completely erase your HD. ( I had to erase my machines HD multiple times because the first aid would complete the erasure and create an extra phantom drive leaving me with two HD's. Apple Support explained that this was normal and was part of the difference between the original/factory OS and the newest OS which was part of the reason for the permissions errors. )

THIRD STEP: After you have erased the HD enough times to have a single drive remaining then you will need to use either "internet recovery" or "recovery" and reinstall the native OS or original factory OS on your HD and continue installing the OS updates all the way to the most current OS without installing anything else until the final OS is completely installed and updated. Then you should be able to reinstall all your applications and have permissions restored. 

This was as far as I needed to go to resolve all of the permission related and file opening and saving related problems if your are still having issues I would contact Apple support and explain that you are having issues with the installation of the most recent OS update. They are aware of these compatibility issues and can be very helpful in resolving them or at least explaining if you might need to take an additional step to achieve the same results I did. 
 

3: IF YOU ARE STILL HAVING ISSUES THEN.... Check Font Compatibility:

After going through all of the above I still had some files open with display issues and no matter what I did I could not select the fonts that were displayed improperly. The problem turned out to be POSTSCRIPT fonts. I've been working as a designer for quite some time so I have many fonts from long long ago. These older fonts can be read by a number of applications but they are becoming less and less compatible. I would recommend updating to the OTF or TTF versions of your fonts to ensure that the Affinity applications can use them along with any other font management software you might be using. 

Hope this helps.
Best of luck.

 

[wcc2022]

Good day to you,

 

I worked on a calendar design yesterday and it cannot be opened today. The notification shows that the file is corrupted. The screenshot of the notification is attached. The affinity was saved in an external hardisk. Can you help me to recover the file? The affinity file is attached below too.

Thank you

1724717766_InnerPage.afdesign

[carl123]

@wcc2022

Recovered document is attached

The problem was the image called grass.png in the August Artboard, which was somehow corrupted

I have deleted the image so you will need to replace it from the original

PS I don't have all the fonts used in the document but it looks Ok to me. Suggest you check when opening the recovered file that all Artboards look OK

 

 

1 hour ago, wcc2022 said:

The affinity was saved in an external hardisk

Don't do that! 

Corrupt Affinity files mostly occur when your file is stored and worked on from a non-internal drive

Always use an internal drive for all work (you can copy it to another non-internal drive when completed)

Most corrupt files are NOT recoverable,

Always have multiple backups whilst working.

Suggest you use some sort of versioning when saving your work and save regularly to a new filename.
(E.g. myfile_v1.afdesign, myfile_v2.afdesign, myfile_v3.afdesign, etc) 

 

Note: For the Devs to be able to investigate these corruptions further can you specify what OS you are using, what harddisk it was and how you connected to it (e.g. USB cable, NAS etc)

1724717766_InnerPage_recovered.afdesign

[wcc2022]

@carl123

 

Thanks for your assistance!😀

[GraphicsByGreg]

This file JUST corrupted on me.  I have tried everything I can.  IF ANYONE can help..  I would greatly appreciate it thank you!!!!!!! 

LaTICE.afdesign