Affinity2 doesn’t have permission to save to that file.

[Phoenix078]

Can anyone please please help. When trying to save a project to iCloud I get a notification that I do not have permission to save. It saves ok the first and second times but then I get the notification.
Every other app I have has no problems. 

I have read posts about this that go back years, Affinity blames iCloud, iCloud blames Microsoft, Microsoft blames me, I blame Affinity and the show goes on. I have tried everything short of deleting the whole shebang and going somewhere else. 
someone must know something about this. It’s been a problem for a lot of people for a long time. 
I never had this problem with Affinity Designer 1. 
please help. I had a full head of hair when I started this and now I’m as bald as a………..

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, Phoenix078 said:

Can anyone please please help. When trying to save a project to iCloud I get a notification that I do not have permission to save. It saves ok the first and second times but then I get the notification.

Hi and welcome to the forums.

When this happens choose File > Save As and save it to a new file. The problem is just with overwriting the existing file, something with iCloud causes things to get confused. You can delete the older file later. I just add 1, 2, 3. to the end of my filename.

The problem is less frequent with 2.2 as Serif made some changes to file handling. I use iCloud, too, and I used to experience this daily in v1 but I rarely experience it now.

Good luck.

[Phoenix078]

Thank you MikeTo. I’ve never had this problem with affinity 1. I have to save a lot with my workflow and I can’t be ‘saving as’ every 30sec. I already have 2.2 installed. If I can’t get it to work I’ll have to try some other software. A real shame because I have been using Affinity Designer for years with no problems. 
thanks again for your help. 

[MikeTO]

3 hours ago, Phoenix078 said:

Thank you MikeTo. I’ve never had this problem with affinity 1. I have to save a lot with my workflow and I can’t be ‘saving as’ every 30sec. I already have 2.2 installed. If I can’t get it to work I’ll have to try some other software. A real shame because I have been using Affinity Designer for years with no problems. 
thanks again for your help. 

Serif recommends saving to an internal drive that is not synced with the cloud. I tried that but I really like the convenience of the cloud so I chose to keep using iCloud and just used Save As whenever I encountered this error. Really, it was a non issue, and it meant I kept making extra backups which is always a good thing.

But I haven't had the issue in a while now.

Good luck.

[Phoenix078]

I use iCloud regularly to import and export my work and to switch between the computer and iPad, so it’s an essential part of my set up. I am just so, so disappointed at this. I have been using Affinity Designer for years and never had any problems with the first version. Even version 2 worked great when I first got it, apart from some Chinese font issues. I have bragged about and recommended this app to many friends and colleagues over the years, one who recently quit his Adobe subscription to move to Affinity. I am not looking forward to meeting him again. 
All my other apps work just fine with iCloud, like, clip studio, graphtec, make the cut and Affinity Designer 1. 
Even if this isn’t a problem with Affinity, you would think they would help, as this is affecting their customers. 
I’m back to using Designer 1 for now….. progress???

[Dan C]

Hi @Phoenix078,

Thanks for your report and I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble!

I can confirm that our team have recently replicated this issue when saving/loading Affinity documents from an iCloud location on Windows, whereby the app will eventually lose access to the original file location, causing the error message you're seeing.

This is a bug within the Affinity apps and has been logged with our development team to be resolved ASAP. I'll be sure to 'bump' the development log using your thread now to bring it to our teams attention once again.

Unfortunately, outside of using Affinity V1, I'm not aware of any workarounds for this issue at this time - my sincerest apologies for any inconveniences caused due to this.

[Phoenix078]

Thanks Dan,

now that I know, I can stop scanning the internet for solutions and changing every possible setting on my computer(hope I didn’t do too much damage). Looking forward to the fix.

[R. C. Schletty]

I am having a similar problem. One error is sometimes not being able to Save, Save As or Export. Job files are on an internal 4TB HDD drive in my 2009 Mac Pro tower (macOS Catalina). The job folder is 4 levels deep in the hierarchy. One temporary solution was to move the Affinity file to the Desktop where I was able to Save and Export. Next temporary solution was to remove a comma from the nested folder name. Seemed to work for awhile but then the issue recurred.

The second error is with switching between Designer and Photo. After switching from Designer to Photo and doing some image edits, I tried to switch the file back to Designer. I got this error:

Failed to launch Affinity Designer 2
The application was not available. An recoverable error occurred while trying to restore the document. The document will now close.

Happily, after quitting both Designer and Photo, I was able to open the .afdesign file in Photo, but not in Designer. Trying to open the file in Designer gave me this:

Failed to open file
The file is already open in Affinity Photo 2 on this device.

So I had no choice but to open in Photo, whereupon it prompted me to open a recovery file. I didn't lose any work, but it is really annoying to be getting these errors. Never had anything like it with Affinity 1.

[tymcat]

Since today in Designer 2.3.1 / Mac – just updatet – I have the same problem.
I can save over the existing file, but saving itself isn't possible due to "missing permission".

Can someone please sort/copy/connect my reply to the Mac section, I don't know how to do that and it is probably connected to this issue here.

[R. C. Schletty]

7 hours ago, tymcat said:

Since today in Designer 2.3.1 / Mac – just updatet – I have the same problem.
I can save over the existing file, but saving itself isn't possible due to "missing permission".

Can someone please sort/copy/connect my reply to the Mac section, I don't know how to do that and it is probably connected to this issue here.

I occasionally have this same issue with Affinity 2.3.1. It is vexing. My workaround is to "Save As" to my Mac Desktop or to a folder one level higher than my working job folder. After saving, I move the file into position in the job folder. I am NOT using iCloud. I am working off an internal 4TB hard drive in my 2009 Mac Pro running Catalina with 48 GB of RAM.

[kevinmcsherry]

Same here: I don't use iCloud but I have an external SSD that works perfectly for everything else -including Affinity 1 apps. Strangely, after quitting and restarting AD, when I try to open the file I was working on, it appears as a Affinity Publisher backup file. I can only open it in Publisher. Fortunately, all the layers have saved (so far). It has just happened now...

[Dan C]

Sorry to see you're having trouble @kevinmcsherry!

Can you please confirm for me, which version of Affinity Designer V2 is currently installed on your mac? You can find out by navigating to Affinity Designer 2 > About and the version number will be shown in this dialog.

Many thanks in advance

[kevinmcsherry]

Hi Dan,

Version 2.3.1 

Thanks,

Kevin

[Dan C]

Thanks for verifying that for me Kevin!

Affinity 2.2 included improvements to file handling when opening from external devices which I understood should have reduced the chances of a document being lost when this error occurs - I can see from the error message that the file appears to save correctly ("Save was successful"), however "Access to the file was lost" usually means the Affinity app can no longer see or communicate with your external SSD correctly.

Is this a device you are disconnecting and reconnecting during editing? Or perhaps do you leave this connected to your machine, but allow the mac to Sleep/Hibernate whilst editing the document?

21 hours ago, kevinmcsherry said:

Strangely, after quitting and restarting AD, when I try to open the file I was working on, it appears as a Affinity Publisher backup file. I can only open it in Publisher

I can see the app is generating a backup document, which is part of the aforementioned file handling improvements once the app has lost access to the external device.

I suspect that Affinity Publisher has become the 'default' app on your mac for opening these files, however you should be able to open these within Designer also - either by drag and dropping the file into Designer, or by right-clicking on the file in Finder and selecting Get Info, then under the Open with: section you can set the app to Affinity Designer 2 and select 'Change All...' to make this the default Affinity app for opening these types of files.

I have also logged your report with our development team, as we are tracking similar reports since making these file handing changes. I'll be sure to respond here with any further questions or information our developers may require

[kevinmcsherry]

Thank you again Dan. The backup file does open with no loss or changes, so that's fine. This has been happening a lot since I upgraded (though not immediately - it worked fine for the first couple of weeks). I read some of the posts regarding this issue and saw suggestions about saving documents to the internal drive so that's what I'm doing now. It would be nice if I didn't need to do that.

I think there is a possibility that my external SSD is unhitching itself although, it's never while I'm working. It's usually after waking the PC up in the morning.

[tymcat]

I'm not having these issues at the moment, but it might be it's because my Nextcloud folder got unhinged from the cloud server. I was always working on a local file that was mirrored on the server.
I'm a complete IT non-expert, but could it be that Affinity checks the distance file-in-RAM to the saving location? Allowing only next-to-CPU locations?

[Leigh]

We're sorry for the delay in providing an update on this. Our developers have added some additional internal code in our 2.5 beta build that should allow them to better diagnose saving related issues. If you could download and install the 2.5 beta build to see if you can replicate the issues, that would be helpful 🤞

https://affinity.serif.com/affinity-beta-program/

[tymcat]

I'll test the 2.5 Beta version. Since the saving error occurs rarely and randomly, I can only report for sure, when the error persists
It happens with files I saved before in the same spot, and only after some time, when I had a break in between.

I routinely save my documents "old school"-like with a reflective left hand move - on my internal disk, it is getting only mirrored later in Nextcloud.

iMac 18.2 21.5" 2017, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Ventura
MBP 10.1 15" 2012, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Catalina

[photodee]

Mine has started doing this today after I installed the latest update.  when i try and save as a tiff using the Export command or delete from my folders I am told that I need administrator permissions.  No problems before the latest update.  Not happy.  are there any fixes yet?  I am using Affinity Photo version 2.6.3

 

Edited May 15 by photodee

[Leigh]

13 hours ago, photodee said:

Mine has started doing this today after I installed the latest update.  when i try and save as a tiff using the Export command or delete from my folders I am told that I need administrator permissions.  No problems before the latest update.  Not happy.  are there any fixes yet?  I am using Affinity Photo version 2.6.3

 

Welcome to the forum @photodee

Would it be possible to start a new thread regarding your issue? Thank you!