AFPUB file type not supported - Affinity Publisher 2

[Country Cow Designs]

I have a file that I created in Affinity Publisher 2 and have been working on for the last couple of months. It's an AFPUB file. I haven't worked on it for 3 weeks and today when I tried to open it, it says "the file type is not supported". I created it on the same computer, on Affinity Publisher 2. There has been a small update to Affinity Publisher 2 since then, which I accepted, but other than that, nothing has changed. Any ideas for how I can fix this and open the file?

 

[mopperle]

Seems to be another problem with this shit OneDrive. You have linked your documents folder to the MS OneDrive Cloud and this causes many problems in many other apps too, not only Affinity.

Always work on a local file which is not synced to any cloudstorage. Use the cloud (if at all) only to backup or share files.

Hopefully you have a local backup of your file. Also youn try to download the file to a folder which is not synced to the cloud.

[Country Cow Designs]

Thanks. I've been using OneDrive for five years and never had this happen. I didn't realise it was an issue. It's tough because I have to change between two computers when working so I guess I'll have to figure out a way around it. Thanks for your help!

[mopperle]

As said, do not work directly on synced files. Work locally and then upload it to the cloud and download it locally to your other PC.

[walt.farrell]

You might try moving the file to a directory) disk that is not managed by OneDrive. Or marking the file to be available offline so OneDrive restores the complete file to your local drive.

[Dan C]

Hi @Country Cow Designs,

Thanks for your report & we're certainly sorry to hear this file is no longer opening for you.

As we've confirmed via Facebook DMs, unfortunately our Support team were unable to recover this file using our usual methods, and therefore it has been logged with our development team using the information you've already provided.

As the file was stored using OneDrive, you may be able to recover a previous version of the file in working condition using the method outlined below -

OneDrive Version History

I hope this clears things up!

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, Dan C said:

this file is no longer opening

Just curious, isn't the message "File type not supported" wrong? According to the message, it's a file that isn't corrupted (checks confirm it's correct), but Affinity doesn't support its format (the fact that it has a *.afpub extension may not be relevant, as the file may have been renamed).
Or is it a "damaged" file that Affinita misinterprets as "unsupported format"? Do Affinity files even have any checking mechanisms to detect their corruption?

[Dan C]

27 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Just curious, isn't the message "File type not supported" wrong?

Technically the message is unexpected, as it appears to have been a legitimate .afpub file previously - but the reason for it is likely the one you've already mentioned;

27 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

is it a "damaged" file that Affinita misinterprets as "unsupported format"

If certain file header information is missing, the Affinity app will not read the file as a supported format, regardless of the file extension itself.

29 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Do Affinity files even have any checking mechanisms to detect their corruption?

The Affinity apps do have checks for corruption, which happen when loading the file - this is the reason you may occasionally see "the file has been opened, but has errors" warning, as this corruption detection can sometimes find issues with a file that can otherwise be loaded and appear normal.

Unfortunately the actual mechanisms for corruption detection are a little outside my remit of knowledge, so I can't really explain the functionality much further - but I hope this clears things up!