Missing artwork from AI files in Affinity canvas

[Larque]

I am new to AD. Used AI for over 20yrs but need to move on... so please excuse my beginners learning curve here.

I have an untold number of AI files that I am opening in AD, and all elements {text, images, vectors..} that were saved on the canvas but outside margins of document, are not showing up at all. I generally understand the artboard concept in AD and also have toggled off Clip to Canvas, so that I am able to see all artwork. However, doing this did NOT recover any of my lost artwork that I know existed in the Illustrator file. Is there ANY way to recover these lost parts on my AI files?

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

The Affinity applications cannot understand the undocumented native AI data formats. They rely on the user having saved a PDF data stream in the AI file (the Illustrator "compatibility" option), and then they read the PDF stream. Unfortunately, AI does not save those elements into the PDF file, and thus they are not available for the Affinity applications to process.

I think you would need to process the AI file in Illustrator or another application that can understand the native format, and move those objects onto an artboard (or equivalent) in Illustrator so they can be included in the PDF stream.

[Larque]

Thank you Walt. I suspected this might be the issue. Frustrating. Thanks for the information.

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome.