.Ai file is not opening in Affinity Designer

[Schmu]

Someone recently sent me an .Ai file and after downloading it and opening it in Affinity Designer, I was met with a blank page. No layers are listed either. I had the person resend it and they said the file is fine on their end and the new file they sent also showed a blank screen. I'm using the most up to date version of affinity designer. Does anyone know why this is?

[v_kyr]

Hard to tell since we don't know how the Ai file looks like and may behave with other third party software. We also don't know of what the Affinity Ai format parser is capable to parse at all from the whole Ai format specs. - So in your case the best solution might be, if they send you a PDF file instead, since the Affinity products do usually have less trouble with the parsing/loading of PDF files.

[Schmu]

v_kyr, can you explain what you mean by "we don't know how the Ai file looks like"? This source Ai file was sent to me from an artist I had work a drawing done with. He sent the jpegs and pngs of the art but I need it in AI to be able to scale the artwork with a transparent background. Do you suggest getting information from him on how he saved the file? Is there anything else you would suggest?

[v_kyr]

1 minute ago, Schmu said:

v_kyr, can you explain what you mean by "we don't know how the Ai file looks like"?

I meant how it's (en)coded in Ai format here and thus how Adobe Illustrator generated this. - You can also scale the PDF as a transparent background artwork, the background in the PDF will be usually a white (or whatever bg color was initially used) curve at the bottom of the layer panel. Just hide or remove that one (that single layer)!

[walt.farrell]

31 minutes ago, Schmu said:

Someone recently sent me an .Ai file and after downloading it and opening it in Affinity Designer, I was met with a blank page.

Possibly they did not save the .ai file with the compatibility option enabled which would embed a PDF copy of (much of) the design into the file. As .ai data is proprietary, without the PDF copy included Affinity can't see any of the data.

(If you open the .ai file with a text editor do you see what looks like a PDF file embedded in it?)

[Schmu]

7 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

(If you open the .ai file with a text editor do you see what looks like a PDF file embedded in it?)

When I open the file in Microsoft Notepad, I see "%PDF-1.5" listed at the top. Is this what you mean, Walt? My apologies, I'm a newbie.

[walt.farrell]

31 minutes ago, Schmu said:

When I open the file in Microsoft Notepad, I see "%PDF-1.5" listed at the top. Is this what you mean, Walt? My apologies, I'm a newbie.

No need to apologize. And yes, that seems to indicate that the PDF form of the data is present, which is the first requirement.

[Schmu]

Thank you, Walt. This is good to know. Is there anything else you would suggest to allow the file to appear, Walt?

[walt.farrell]

We're at the limit of my knowledge in this area, so you'll need to wait for more info from someone else; sorry.

[v_kyr]

As said before, let them send you a PDF format file instead if the Ai file can't be opened correctly, or vectorize that PNG you have there (as far as it is of good size and quality).