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Any way to open Illustrator 5-6 files in Creative Suite?

A

Akwaaba

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 19, 2011
15
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I am trying to access Illustrator 5 and 6 files that I created 1996-1997. I have tried opening them as well as placing them in CS 2, 3, 4, and 5 to no avail. I get a message that "the file is in an unknown format and cannot be opened" in Illustrator and Photoshop. In InDesign, I get "Cannot place this file. No filter found for requested operation." No luck with Acrobat or Distiller, either. I have tried changing extensions from .eps to .ai and vice-versa. No luck. Can't open them in Preview, Graphic Converter, or Inkscape, either.

Does anyone know of a way to get these ancient postscript files into Creative Suite? Perhaps a plug-in or third-party software? Anything? I am on Mac OS 10.6.5. Thanks.
 
It's a long shot, but dragging the file onto the application icon in the dock will sometimes force an application to open a file where it will refuse to do so from the standard Open dialogue, or by double-clicking.

Given that I can save back to Illustrator 3 from CS3, I'm very surprised that AI won't open this for you, and even more surprised that Photoshop won't rasterize it. If you can make the files available online somewhere and post a link, I'll be happy to have a look at them.

Cheers

Jim
 
Also tried. No joy. Wondering whether these are .ps files that are missing some data forks or something.

Were they created on a Mac? Were they zipped or compressed in any way or stored on a Windows-formatted medium?
 
They are uncompressed Illustrator files, created in versions 5 and 6 on a Mac. I believe it was OS 7. They've never been stored on Windows media.

An Adobe tech told me he thought it had something to do with Illustrator's change in architecture from postscript to pdf, but that they no longer support anything prior to CS2.
 
Just registered!

Hi All,

This is my first post!

Subject to the comments about postscript and pdf architecture, the following may work:
It's a long shot, but if I ever have troublesome Ai files I open them with Acrobat and then open the resulting pdf in Illustrator. Be aware that any text may need to be recreated.
Plan B would be to right click the file and 'Open With' - Illustrator.

Hope this is of use,
Robin
 
Illustrator to Preview to Illustrator

It may even be possible to salvage something by opening the Illustrator files in Preview, saving as a pdf and then opening the pdf in Illustrator.
Once again this is dependant on the old Ai files being pdf friendly.
As a last, last option, try changing the file extension to .ai or .pdf.
 
Last edited:
Another VERY long shot, but have you considered trying something like Graphic Converter?
 
Your files are.. weird...

I read and write PostScript, and nothing will "open" these files as they do not contain any PS. The files all start with a few bytes of nonsense, then the proper type/creator tags for an EPS file from Illustrator 5- EPSFART5. This is followed by a not entirely arbitrary stream of what appears to be binary info. It's not entirely arbitrary, as some PS structures can be detected, especially in the large file, there are long sequences of regular, repeating data - resembling pattern definitions in form, but the content is gibberish. The files also end with the same EPSFART5 tag, also followed by a few garbage characters.

Type/creator tags can be wrong, and most file systems and apps will not look beyond that to determine a file's composition. It almost appears that these are binhex files that have not decoded properly - remember .bin and .hqx files? Stuffit, at least the version I have (Expander 14.0.1), does not recognize these files as they are, but this may give you a clue as to what is going on with this data. I'll try a few more things to see if anything comes up, but my hopes are not that high. Perhaps some vintage software might help?

I wouldn't know any of this stuff if I hadn't had these problems, so I know how you feel right about now, it sucks... :(

dmz
 
Thanks for your help. I've tried Graphic Converter and everything else mentioned so far to no avail. I had pretty much given up hope, but the binhex lead does give me renewed hope. I've tried unstuffing them of course, which didn't work, but it is possible the files could have been compressed at one time.
 
Thanks, DMZ

Thank you for your help, DMZ (and everyone else). Turns out these are actually DiskDoubler archives. It took me a while to figure out how to get into them on OS X, but The Unarchiver works like a charm.
 
Yup, I still have DD files, and other archives compressed using Compact Pro and other programs whose names I don't even remember, backed up on Syquest 44s, CDs and Jaz disks - wonder if I'll be able to use them when I need them? I still have one old Mac with System 7, 8 and a SCSI card, but I don't know how long I'll be able to keep that going...

Anyway, glad we were able to help! Blue Velvet tipped me to some files I had a similar problem with, and Jim too, so I think it was a group effort.

Cheers!

dmz
 
Thanks from the future.... I had tried everything and looked in a lot of places. Who would have thought it worth compressing 60kb files, but I guess 15 years ago it was a priority. A lot of work has been avoided thanks to your pointers re: compression!

thanks again.
Greg

dmz said:
Your files are.. weird...

I read and write PostScript, and nothing will "open" these files as they do not contain any PS. The files all start with a few bytes of nonsense, then the proper type/creator tags for an EPS file from Illustrator 5- EPSFART5. This is followed by a not entirely arbitrary stream of what appears to be binary info. It's not entirely arbitrary, as some PS structures can be detected, especially in the large file, there are long sequences of regular, repeating data - resembling pattern definitions in form, but the content is gibberish. The files also end with the same EPSFART5 tag, also followed by a few garbage characters.

Type/creator tags can be wrong, and most file systems and apps will not look beyond that to determine a file's composition. It almost appears that these are binhex files that have not decoded properly - remember .bin and .hqx files? Stuffit, at least the version I have (Expander 14.0.1), does not recognize these files as they are, but this may give you a clue as to what is going on with this data. I'll try a few more things to see if anything comes up, but my hopes are not that high. Perhaps some vintage software might help?

I wouldn't know any of this stuff if I hadn't had these problems, so I know how you feel right about now, it sucks... :(

dmz
Click to expand...
 
Any luck on this topic? here is a file I created in 1997 and want to open it again, it is vector versions of all the peanuts flags I created working for NCE. I have an old Imac at home running os 9, and an even older laptop I might hook back up to open if I can make myelf remember to do this... Let me know if there is an easier way? Please and Thank You
 

Attachments

  • peanuts flags on sheet.ai.zip
    762.6 KB · Views: 134
bartenational said:
Any luck on this topic? here is a file I created in 1997 and want to open it again, it is vector versions of all the peanuts flags I created working for NCE. I have an old Imac at home running os 9, and an even older laptop I might hook back up to open if I can make myelf remember to do this... Let me know if there is an easier way? Please and Thank You
Click to expand...
I'm fairly certain your only chance of opening that file is to try to find a copy of Illustrator 5 and opening it with that.

[UPDATE: Illustrator 7 may be an option as well, but that may be the latest version that supports those old postscript AI files]
 
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bartenational said:
Let me know if there is an easier way?
Click to expand...
You could open the file with a hex editor like Hex Fiend, delete the first character (a whitespace, character code 20), save the file and open it with Illustrator.
OpenedFileInHexFiend.png

DeletedFirstCharacterWithHexEditor.png
 

Attachments

  • peanuts flags on sheet_mod.ai.zip
    758.5 KB · Views: 182
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okay, these are encapsulated postscript files. use ghostscript to convert them to PDFand then open these in Illustrator. Apple’s Preview will open them and then save them from there as PDF.
 
Has anyone tried opening the file in Sketch and resaving it as an SVG or EPS? I think I had to do that one time for an old file. I don't have any old AI files to try it, but just a thought?
 
The OP's attached files are broken links. If the OP or someone else could provide some more broken files, we could see, if it's always the same error. Writing a droplet, that strips off the first byte, should be quite easy.
 
I can confirm that @organicCPU's attached .ai file does work. I re-downloaded the .ai file from post #15 above to try it myself using Apple's built-in TextEdit app – removing that space did the trick.

Here is what the file looks like using the latest version of Adobe Illustrator CC (Affinity Designer still won't open it though):

Screen Shot 2021-10-16 at 2.02.31 AM.png
 
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MacGizmo said:
Affinity Designer still won't open it though
Click to expand...
It seems that Affinity's Illustrator parser can't handle old .ai formats. Trying to open a simple Illustrator 3 file in Affinity Designer doesn't work, either. Whereas Illustrator 8 files will work. But, more important to me, Affinity can even parse Illustrator CC files, that Adobe Illustrator CS6 won't open, as they are way too new.

Yeah, TextEdit with defaults set to plain text and UTF-8 is one of the best apps that Apple ever made… ;)
 
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