Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 7/6/2010

Question
Hello, I work in Illustrator CS 2.
Once in a while, like today, after I save my work and go to open a file later,
I get a pop up that says 'The file "filename.ai" is in an unknown format and
cannot be opened. All I did was work on my mac...save my work.
Close the file and try and re-open it later when needed.
I'm a graphic designer and I lost all my hours of work because of this problem.
We could not open it in any program ...and tried making a copy of it and changing the
extenstion to a jpg and that didn't work...nothing worked.
Any help would be great.

Answer
Hi Amy,

When you save as a .ai doc, be sure you keep the "Create PDF compatible file" checked in the dialog box. If you have this unchecked, it will corrupt your file.

If this is not the case, please write me back and let me know.

Thanks

Kevin