Affinity Photo important file corrupted. Need help from Affinity Team.

[PJR9]

2 days ago, I working on Affinity Photo and I usually save the file in an external hard drive.

I open the file again today and Affinity Photo said it was corrupted.

More in detail, Affinity Photo can load the file but not 100% of it and I can see all my work in there. (Photo Layer etc.). And suddenly the popup said

"Failed to load document : ...

The document appears to be corrupted.

The document must now be closed."

 

I have read some article on affinity forum and I believed Affinity Support Team can help me recover the file.

I can not put the file publicly because It was a commercial work.

So I need help from Affinity Team directly. Please reply and I will DM back immediately.

[TheDoc]

I have been having the same problem with Affinity Publisher. I get the same warning and then the program closes on it's own. I will be following this to see what the answer is from the Affinity team

[NotMyFault]

2 hours ago, PJR9 said:

2 days ago, I working on Affinity Photo and I usually save the file in an external hard drive.

Crossing fingers that Affinity is able to recover you files.

Just as an advice to reduce the risk of such issues occurring  in future: always store your (Affinity) files on internal SDD/HDD.

Always check that your primary OS drive has enough free capacity, at least 32 GB. 
You can backup or move the files safely later (when Affinity is not running).

Affinity seems to not lock files (while running and having them open), the forum has quite a few reports with file corruption issues when saving on external drives or NAS / network shares, and even Apple Cloud.

For critical files, create more than one copy (e.g. every hour per day while editing) to limit data loss.

Otherwise a power outage can ruin your day, despite current OS and file systems have evolved to quite good stability . They do not guarantee file content consistency, only consistency of metadata in case of crashes.

 

 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, NotMyFault said:

For critical files, create more than one copy (e.g. every hour per day while editing) to limit data loss.

And don't depend on doing a Save. I would suggest using Save As, and saving a copy under a unique name. That way you can go back to a copy you saved earlier.

 

[NotMyFault]

54 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

That depends on the file system. e.g. ZFS on Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux has per block checksums.

absolutely. But probably almost no user of Affinity (on Windows or Mac) uses ZFS, and when most likely as NAS. 

55 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

My view: this should be built into Affinity. There should always be a useable 'last good version' of the file you are working on.

100% agree. But don’t hold your breath waiting for Affinity to offer this functionality. I bet it will never happen. I learned about Affinity in a computer magazine in 2017, they liked the functionality but complained about frequent crashes and corrupted files. Nothing has changed in 4 years. It got even worse since 1.9 introduced OpenCL. I raised 3 bug reports since march 2021 leading to immediate crash & lost data & symbol library corrupt - all still unsolved. (defringe filter negative radius, lightning filter loading tiff bump map, symbols with nested blur filters)

I used publisher only once for a simple project, and dropped it after getting a corrupt file. 

[Callum]

Hi All,

Its not often that files can be recovered so I don't like to get anyones hopes up. However if you could tell me the last thing you were doing with the corrupted file inside of Affinity and where the file is typically stored (locally, cloud, usb etc) then provide a copy of the file I can log all of this information with our developers to help us prevent this issue from occurring in the future. With any luck your file will be fixed in the process.

Thanks
C

[PJR9]

Hello everyone,

 

Thanks for much good advice. I'll follow and be careful. My problem has been fixed by Affinity Team already. All information is available. I've appreciated the Affinity Team and you guys.

[Panue]

Hi all, 

decided to comment on this thread since I have a similar problem, but with Designer. It tells me that "The file version is not supported by this version of Affinity.", even though I had been working on that file about 6 months prior. Other .afdesign files seem to open OK, even those saved in Dropbox. 

 

Any chance of helping me out, @Callum?

 

Thanks!

[Panue]

Thanks for the reminder. Yesterday after reading this thread I did move all files to local to be backed up to external drive and iCloud. 

//Panu

[Callum]

On 10/23/2022 at 9:28 AM, Panue said:

Hi all, 

decided to comment on this thread since I have a similar problem, but with Designer. It tells me that "The file version is not supported by this version of Affinity.", even though I had been working on that file about 6 months prior. Other .afdesign files seem to open OK, even those saved in Dropbox. 

 

Any chance of helping me out, @Callum?

 

Thanks!

Hi Panue, 

Welcome to the forums

Please could you attach one of the files to this thread so I can look into this further for you?

Thanks
C

[Panue]

Hi Callum, 

and thanks for the quick reply. I attached two files, both have been saved on my Dropbox but have worked prior to last week. The first one (panu CV engl blue 2022.afdesign) is the newer file that worked 6  months ago but not anymore. The second one (panu CV english muokattava vihreä 2016.afdesign) I wanted to share as a reference. It is a file that I had saved in same Dropbox location, but which I have not been working on for a long time. However, when I tried opening it that still worked despite the long pause in between.

My Affinity Designer version is 1.5.5. I did change my Mac some time ago and migrated the contents from old Mac using an external hard drive. Could that have had an impact? However, it would still feel odd since the files have gone through the same "procedures"...

 

Thanks already beforehand!

panu CV english muokattava vihreä 2016.afdesign panu CV engl blue 2022.afdesign

[Panue]

On 10/25/2022 at 12:41 PM, N.P.M. said:

I hope this is a typo? 
Because we are on version 1.10.5
Opened your files in afpub and it just opened though some fonts were missing

It was  

Anyhow, I tried a bunch of stuff, but eventually removing and then re-installing Affinity Designer did the trick! For some reason the file that I could not open previously now opens just fine. Also from Dropbox (had to try, even though I keep files on my desktop from now on...). 

So no need to work on the file anymore @Callum! Thanks anyway. 

//Panu

[raffenest]

Hey @Callum

I have a similar problem in Affinity Designer. A file I was working on just a few days ago is suddenly corrupted. The notice says "Failed to load document. The document appears to be corrupted. The document must now be closed." There is an additional notice behind that one that says "Your file was corrupted, but we have manage to recover an older version of it. You are advised to save the file under a new filename." But when I close the first notice it closes the entire document before I can resave under a new name. Any chance you could help me with this? I save everything in an external hard drive, but reading all the forums it looks like I should be making back up copies which I have not done, but will now for the future. 

Thanks!