Transferring .af files to Illustrator so that they're still editable

[Gaby101]

I used to have Affinity designer on my old windows laptop but I recently got a MacBook and decided to use the Adobe programs instead of buying the Affinity programs again. However I soon realized that Illustrator won't open .af files and basically I kind of lost all my vector editable files of projects I had previously made on Affinity Designer because I literally can't open them and edit them anymore. I still have the Affinity Designer app on my iPad, so I tried airdropping the files from the laptop to it, opening them on the app, and exporting my files as EPS, SVG, and PDF, so I could open them on Illustrator on my Mac. All three ways resulted in my document's text being converted to curves and every single letter was put into a different layer so it wasn't editable text which kind of defeats the whole purpose of having an editable vector file. I know technically I could still edit these files from my iPad but some of them are too large for the device to handle and the whole reason why I got my new laptop was so I could use it for designing, not so I would be stuck using my iPad when I needed to fix or change something from a previous project. Also, my windows laptop is no longer usable so using that one to edit previous files is not an option.I have hope that I was maybe doing something wrong during the process and that there is a correct way to transfer these files so that I can edit everything properly (or at least the text🥲) and that someone who knows way more about this can help me. This is making me really stressed and frustrated so I would really appreciate the help! 😭 Thank you and happy new year🙂

[Mark Oehlschlager]

I just tried exporting an Affinity Designer document with a two-word headline to PDF, EPS, and SVG.

In my experience, the SVG preserved the text as editable line text in Adobe Illustrator. The EPS file converted the text to outlines. Illustrator had difficulty interpreting the exported PDF – it converted one word to outlines, but preserved the second word as editable line text.

I recommend exporting your Affinity files as SVG files, and make sure that your export settings do *not* include the option to convert text to outlines.

Beyond that, I can only recommend that you export all of your Affinity Designer files out as both PDF and SVG, and be prepared to reset the text in Illustrator if necessary – a minor inconvenience.

 

Edited December 31, 2020 by Mark Oehlschlager