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Missing artwork from AI files in Affinity canvas


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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?

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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.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
    Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2,  16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1

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You're welcome.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
    Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2,  16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1

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