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Shared publisher file "appears to be corrupted" - urgent


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A colleague and I have been sharing a publisher file on Google drive for six months - last opened successfully yesterday afternoon. However now it won't open - says "appears to be corrupted but we have managed to recover an older version". The recovery file has the right document size but is blank. I have downloaded earlier versions of the file from Google but they all open with the same error message.

Also tried opening files on my ipad, but again get "appears to be corrupted" - oddly the preview is fine - both in the finder on mac and Affinity's ipad document window.

This file is an event floorplan that has months of work in it so I really would appreciate ideas about how to recover it.

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Hi @Guy Beckett,

It does sound as though your file/s are corrupted and may not be recoverable but can you upload the latest version and a couple of the previous backup files so we can take a look to see if they can be recovered...

Affinity Designer 2.5.5 | Affinity Photo 2.5.5 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.5
MacBook Pro M3 Max, 36 GB Unified Memory, macOS Sonoma 14.6.1, Magic Mouse
HP ENVY x360, 8 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 5 2500U, Windows 10 Home, Logitech Mouse

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Thanks for looking into this. Attached is the latest file plus some numbered backups.

If they can't be opened I can reconstruct the file from a pdf - but it would be great if we could get the publisher file open.

Going forward do you have any workflow suggestions for how to collaborate on affinity files - any preferences - google drive / apple or dropbox? We try not to open at the same time, would that be what corrupted it?  

Also  why have older files also become corrupted? Are they actually different? I suspect that google's file version system is not robust...

 

ISS Master Floor Plan 2024 Guy.afpub 04.afpub 04b.afpub 05.afpub

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Hi @Guy Beckett,

Many thanks for the files... Unfortunately, as you've already seen, they all just open a blank canvas with a single empty Layer and indicate they are corrupted files...

Were these originally PDF files opened in Publisher?

What is slightly odd is that they open as 426 pt x 95 pt, 72 dpi Greyscale Documents which is counter to both the dimensions and colourspace of the original documents...

9 minutes ago, Guy Beckett said:

Going forward do you have any workflow suggestions for how to collaborate on affinity files - any preferences - google drive / apple or dropbox? We try not to open at the same time, would that be what corrupted it?  

The general advice is to work on your internal Hard Drive and then upload to Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox etc., after saving but there have been numerous reported issues with file corruption when using cloud drives so until these are resolved it's difficult to be able to provide any failsafe method for file collaboration...

9 minutes ago, Guy Beckett said:

Going forward do you have any workflow suggestions for how to collaborate on affinity files - any preferences - google drive / apple or dropbox? We try not to open at the same time, would that be what corrupted it?  

That's difficult to know but again, this is not the first time this has been reported in the forums so I think it would require some feedback from the Development team...

Affinity Designer 2.5.5 | Affinity Photo 2.5.5 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.5
MacBook Pro M3 Max, 36 GB Unified Memory, macOS Sonoma 14.6.1, Magic Mouse
HP ENVY x360, 8 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 5 2500U, Windows 10 Home, Logitech Mouse

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It's not just a matter of not working on the same shared file at the same time. It is also a matter of leaving Dropbox complete synching. As a general rule, working on shared files is dangerous, unless the program itself is managing collaboration.

Paolo

 

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Hi Paolo

These were created in Publisher NOT from a pdf - though there was a pdf file then imported into one layer...

Fortunately we have a recent pdf export from publisher - so will recreate it, and put in place a download / local copies / upload workflow. 

I appreciate that collaboration is not a feature yet - maybe with your new owners it might be on a roadmap!

Guy

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2 minutes ago, Guy Beckett said:

maybe with your new owners it might be on a roadmap!

Paolo is an ordinary user, just like you and me. Serif staff are identified by a ‘Staff’ badge, and they all have Moderator status, but I’m not sure whether you can see that if you’re viewing the site on a phone.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.5.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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49 minutes ago, PaoloT said:

It's not just a matter of not working on the same shared file at the same time. It is also a metter of leaving Dropbox complete synching. As a general rule, working on shared files s dangerous, unless the program itself is managing collaboration.

Therefore a separate "Server" application was developed by a competitor, – not to be confused with its earlier "Story Editor" feature, which allows editing text in a separate interface but not independently of the layout and, for example, the available space.

Since this problem of corrupted or completely lost files occurs quite often in Affinity, I wonder if it would at least be possible to implement a warning message when an Affinity document is opened from a non-local drive – to make the user aware of the risk of such a workflow and thus help to avoid data loss?

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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2 hours ago, Alfred said:

Paolo is an ordinary user, just like you and me. Serif staff are identified by a ‘Staff’ badge, and they all have Moderator status, but I’m not sure whether you can see that if you’re viewing the site on a phone.

On a phone, you see a Staff badge, and the Moderator status is denoted by the username being displayed in red:

Screenshot_20240909-073400.png

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
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