Affinity Designer 2.0.4 file corrupted

[squareitround]

Hi, I have a Designer file that won't open and gives a file corrupted error, although it displays it on screen. 

The file was created in V2 on Windows 10 and was stored on a network shared USB2 drive accessed gigabit ethernet. I do have a backup of a much earlier version, but it's quite a bit of work time to loose. 

[squareitround]

29 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

You can try creating another Designer document, then placing the broken one. It may or may not work but it's a trick which works $sometimes.

Thank you, it's partially worked. At least I can access it now. But I can't move the original file's layers into a new document. So it's not ideal for a file that I will be editing fairly regularly. 

[NathanC]

Hi @squareitround,

If you have access to Publisher V2, you could try restoring your designer doc in Publisher by creating a new 1 page document and then going to Document > Add pages from File and then importing it. If successful, you can delete the original blank page and then go to File > Edit in Designer. Once this has been done try saving your document again.

If this fails, if you could provide me with the document I can get it logged with the developers for further investigation, though there's no guarantee that the file can be fully restored or a timescale.

To help avoid file corruption issues we generally recommend opening and saving files to local drives, and then moving them over to external/network storage afterwards.

[squareitround]

2 hours ago, NathanC said:

Hi @squareitround,

If you have access to Publisher V2, you could try restoring your designer doc in Publisher by creating a new 1 page document and then going to Document > Add pages from File and then importing it. If successful, you can delete the original blank page and then go to File > Edit in Designer. Once this has been done try saving your document again.

If this fails, if you could provide me with the document I can get it logged with the developers for further investigation, though there's no guarantee that the file can be fully restored or a timescale.

To help avoid file corruption issues we generally recommend opening and saving files to local drives, and then moving them over to external/network storage afterwards.

Thank you, that seems to have worked. I couldn't get Publisher to Edit the file in Designer, but I was able to save the Publisher file and open it in Designer. The only strange quirk is one of the placed photos I was using in the design now has a purple square in the middle of it. It's not a problem as I can just re-place the photo, it's just an odd glitch. 

[squareitround]

@NathanC Hi, I'm having trouble with this file again. 

It's now stored on a local fast SSD. Up until recently it was working fine but then it started only loading into Designer 2.0.4, and Designer would hang when trying to save it. Now it hangs trying to open it. Trying to open it in 2.1 gives an Unsupported file type error. I've tested other Designer files from the same SSD and they open and save fine. I can open the file in Photo 2.0.4 but again not save it. I really need access to the file as it's promotional media for the charity fundraising event I help with, and this time of year is our most active.