Affinity Designer files corrupted after saving and reopening

[ale2x72]

Hello all,

this is my first post to the forum. I've been a happy Affinity user so far (well, I still am... I own Designer and Photo, both for Windows) and I work on a Windows 8.1 Bootcamp partition on a 2011 MacBook pro (yep, THAT old).

In the last weeks though, a problem occurred twice: Affinity Designer (1.8.3.641) apparently saved correctly my file, but the next day while trying to open it again I got an error and the file does not open again. After the first time (an unpleasant surprise), I searched the forum and a few posts pointed to a potential drive corruption but I checked my SSD and it's ok. I should add here that the drive I'm saving to is in the Mac partition and managed in Windows through MacDrive (I am using this setup since 2011 and I never had any issues with any program, Affinity Designer and Photo included). Fortunately, for the first case I had a recent backup and I was able to recover most of the work done. But the second time happened after a particularly productive day finishing late at night, so I stupidly didn't do a backup. In both cases there were no warning signs: Designer seems to save correctly, there was no weird behaviour from the computer or the operating system themselves, everything looked like it all went well. Except, the next day the files were suddenly not opening anymore. Also, there are no related files in the AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Designer\ folders and subfolders (there was a crash report from 2019, but nothing more recent).

The errors were different in the two cases: "The file type is not supported" and "The file appears to be corrupted". I am attaching here the file that generated the "corrupted" error (for some reason the upload of the other file fails even though it's just a little above 1 Mb) in the hope something can be done or that at least some light can be shed on the cause and maybe have potential fixes in future versions.

Than you in advance for the support!

Alessio

froGH_icons_20200427_problem-corrupted.afdesign

[ale2x72]

@Sean P sorry for the direct quote, since I posted this on Saturday and I had no reply since then I am starting to think that I choose poorly in terms of date/time and maybe this post went completely unnoticed. Just hoping in a reply to the issue I’ve posted. Thank you very much in advance and sorry if I’ve been inappropriate with this follow up.

[Sean P]

Hi ale2x72

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

Unfortunately the file you've attached is 0bytes meaning there is no data inside the file (the same as creating an empty .txt file) so sadly there isn't anything for us to go on. As you've said you had been working on the file for quite a while that makes it even harder to diagnose at what point the issue occurred.

Were the files stored in any form of cloud monitored folder at all? We've seen reports of Google Drive causing corruption on files (not just ours), but I'm not sure that is the case here. Have you tried copying (to ensure you don't overwrite the originals) and opening up any other existing files and doing a Save? To see if there is anything you can do to recreate the issue as a test?

I'm sorry I'm unable to provide any other, better solutions.  

[ale2x72]

No problem Sean, just wanted to make sure the message got through, that's all.

Hmmm.... evidently something went wrong when I uploaded. The file I tried to upload is not zero bytes, but when I tried downloading the files from the link above it was effectively zero bytes.

Here's the file again (should be approximately 22 Mb), via WeTransfer this time: https://we.tl/t-b3IWawlJzW. I hope you can give it another try.

In response to your questions: I was working on my local drive, not a synchronized folder, and I successfully opened and saved other files, and so far they have worked. I forgot to mention: both of the problematic files still show the preview icon when I see the folder in Windows Explorer.

Again, thank you very much in advance!

Alessio

[Sean P]

Hi Alessio,

Thanks for the file - I can confirm I've received it and unfortunately I'm also unable to open it. I will get your file passed on to Development to be investigated.

Do you have Affinity for both Mac and Windows OS's or is it just Windows that you're using them on? Do you remember anything weird/odd happening with your machine whilst you were working on that file, or any time since you noticed it corrupted?

[ale2x72]

Hi Sean,

glad you got the file, I hope Development can at least get to the bottom of this.

I downloaded Affinity trial for Mac a couple of days ago just to check if the file would open on the Mac version, but the file generated the same error. When the error first happened, I had installed only the Windows version. As far as I can remember, nothing unusual happened since the moment I last saved the file (or while I was saving it).

 

[Karla]

I have the same problem but with publisher I was working and when I tried to save that give some kind of error and now I can not open the file just said "The file type is not supported" and working in a Mac just don't know what happed

[Bruno Costa Sampaio]

Boa tarde. Fui abrir meu arquivo hoje, e aparece uma mensagem de arquivo corrompido, tamanho o arquivo 56,6 MB.

Mensagem: Falha ao abrir o documento

O arquivo parece estar corrompido.

 

Como faço para recuperar?