Help with .afdesign file resulting in "file type not supported"?

[ToddZ]

It's finally happened -- a file that I haven't touched in a while won't open.
I haven't upgraded Affinity yet, but I did move from Windows 10 to 11 in the interim.
In some older posts, Affinity staff offered to try to recover a corrupted file -- hoping someone can help with this one.

I'm using:
Designer v1.10.6.1665
Windows 11 22H2

Please let me know if I can upload/send it somewhere for help...

 

Edited September 12, 2023 by ToddZ
precision

[Dan C]

Hi ToddZ, 

Sorry to hear this has happened. Was the file stored locally or cloud / external drive / on a network etc?

You can send me the file here for the devs to take a look at 

https://www.dropbox.com/request/wZzkgtvVxuJ6Wb9II1Z8

We can't guarantee recovery or a timescale but we'll do our best.

Lee

[ToddZ]

Thanks for the response Lee -

The file was restored from an external drive backup of the local synced Dropbox folder, if that makes sense.

But I'm a little embarrassed to just now notice that it's a O KB  file. My Dropbox version history doesn't go back far enough to help, so I think I'm out of luck.

I much appreciate the offer to help, though!

 

Edited September 13, 2023 by ToddZ
clarity

[Colin MacIntyre]

Hey I have the same problem, I discovered that for some reason my file in the cloud has no version history! This project is very important to a game I'm currently developing so I'm in a bit of a panic.

Can I send my file somewhere? It's about 30MB.

[Hangman]

Hi @Colin MacIntyre and welcome to the forums,

Can you upload the file to the forum? If so, we can look at it. If you can't upload it here, reply to this message to request a private Dropbox link, and then someone from Serif can provide a link for you to upload your file privately.

If the file has linked graphics, use Save as Package, save to an empty folder, zip the contents of the folder and then upload the zip file.

[Colin MacIntyre]

Since the file will not open, I unfortunately can't Save as Package. But I've attached the file below. Should I also upload all the image files I think are linked? This is my Hail Mary attempt, so thank you in advance!

titanTactica.afdesign

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Colin MacIntyre said:

Since the file will not open, I unfortunately can't Save as Package. But I've attached the file below. Should I also upload all the image files I think are linked? This is my Hail Mary attempt, so thank you in advance!

That is a completely empty file (all binary 0s) and thus contains no usable data. It will not be recoverable by anything Serif or Affinity could provide.

 

[Colin MacIntyre]

That is heartbreaking. Does anyone know how something like this could happen? I'm baffled.

[walt.farrell]

It may depend on where you initially created the file, and where it was Saved subsequently. Or for a cloud service, which one you used.

It's really hard to say. I suggest keeping regular versioned backup files, manually, and not trusting that any cloud versioning system will work properly. E.g., saving the first time as file1.afdesign, then the next time as file1-a.afdesign, then file1-b.afdesign. And ideally saving on a local disk and only later manually moving or copying to the cloud or some other off-computer disk.

It's also worthwhile, I think, to occasionally Open those backup files to make sure they actually saved properly. If I'm feeling particularly unsure and careful, I might even use a sequence like:

1. Save As file1-a.afdesign.
2. Immediately Save As file1-b.afdesign. You're now working in file1-b.afdesign.
3. Open file1-a.afdesign as a second document tab. If that worked, close (and optionally delete) file1-b.afdesign and keep working on file1-a.afdesign.
4. Later, after making more changes, repeat steps 1-3, but this time start with Save As file1-b (step 1) and file1-c.afdesign (step 2) and in step 3 Open file1-b.afdesign to verify the Save As worked properly.