Open Corrupt Illustrator files (.AI) in Acrobat, Indesign or Illustrator

Question:
My Illustrator file is corrupted / became corrupted. How can I open a corrupted illustrator file?

Answer:
I can't tell you how many times this burned me in college and after school until I started using Freehand. (Freehand is dead now, but OH! how I miss it sometimes...). AI files become corrupt when the machine crashes or your are working off a server a lot.

The answer is a simple question of the workaround that will recognize the vector elements. This can be achieved with Adobe Acrobat, Adobe InDesign, or Adobe Illustrator.

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Adobe Illustrator
To attempt recovery using Illustrator itself:

1. Create a new document
   
2. Select "place image" ( File > Place... )
   
3. Choose your corrupted file in the dialog box. Make sure you choose file types to " ALL DOCUMENTS ", not just RECOMMENDED.
   
4. Save this file. If you cannot save this file (due to corruption), copy your vectors and paste them into a new illustrator document.

PROS: You should be able to select the corrupted file, and your vector work should be saved.
CONS: All layers will be flattened into one. PMS color info and placed images may be lost. File may still be corrupted.

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Adobe InDesign
You can often recover illustrator .ai files in illustrator. It will often fix the corruption issue, because InDesign rewrites all the postscript code itself.

To attempt the recovery using InDesign:

1. Create a new document at the same size of your Illustrator file (or use the default size).
   
2. Select "Place File" ( File > Place... )
   
3. Choose your corrupted file in the dialog box.
   
4. Click on the file to place it. Adjust it to fit on the page entirely.
   
5. Export this InDesign file as an .EPS ( File > Export > Choose .EPS )
   
6. Open this .EPS document in Illustrator

Pros: You've got a working file with all of your vectors intact, and freshly postscripted.
Cons: Your text will probably be broken into numerous textboxes- some of them only a single character or word long. Some layers or all may be flattened.

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Adobe Acrobat (not reader)
Acrobat has some useful mechanics which also rewrite your postscript information. You will need an illustrator version which can open PDF files (ai 10.0 or higher).
To attempt recovery using Acrobat:

1. Open the corrupted file in Illustrator (make sure " ALL FILES " has been chosen)
   
2. Select the arrow tool (if you cannot see it, choose it by using Tools > Advanced Editing > Select Object Tool )
   
3. click on any element, image, or text item, and then move it slightly by using the arrow keys
   
4. Save your file ( File > Save )
   
5. Open your file in your Illustrator program
   
6. When the dialog box pops up telling you that "This file has been modified outside of Illustrator. Would you like to keep the changes", choose YES

Pros: Your file will be fine
Cons: Your file may be a single layer, and your text may be broken in weird places.

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Files get corrupted every day. It seems that Graphic files which are saved directly to a server are corrupted much faster and much more regularly than those saved on your machine.

Best Practices: As an educator, I cannot stress enough how "best practices" will improve your processes, even though they aren't always practical. Sure, we should save our work every 15 minutes. Better still, is to work iteratively, saving a backup file under a different name when the work is sent out for approval or takes a new direction. Work on your hard drive, and then save back to jump drives or servers from there.

If you found this tip helpful, let me know. Thanks!

Create Popup information in your text and image links!

Question: How can I get extra information to pop up when people rollover my images or text links? I've seen this done before, and its always been informative.

Answer: This is done with a simple tag called "TITLE". While the ALT tag is good for readers, the title tag allows search engines to give importance to what you label as title as well as what you include in your text links. Let's see it in action, shall we?

Your typical text link: <a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com"> Learn about our team</a>

A text link with TITLE added <a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com" title="The best darn website ever">Learn about our team</a>

Try it out: Learn about our team

Follow up Question: So I can use this for SEO. How can I use this to my advantage?

Answer: Good Question. This will allow you to add a few extra keywords into your web page without boring your viewers with repetition, and connecting those keywords to your link source as well. All around its a good fit for most pages, grabs the viewer's attention when they pop up, and also makes a little more for spiders to sink their teeth into.

Don't walk down the dark path though. It seems really easy for many people to think they can just jam keywords out of site, and no one will notice. But people do notice- web and engine crawlers notice. It can be easy to get those happy-go-lucky machines into a cranky mood by stuffing unrelated items in edge-wise. If it feels wrong, don't bother.

Your best bet here is just to fill in extra content as needed, but make sure its something that will entice the viewer. Choose "your one stop design shop for graphic design" over "graphic, graphic design, design, web design, web, html, css, awards, award-winning" every time.

Go out and try it today, and send me a link in the reply section to show me what you can do!

Override any CSS Style Instantly!

While creating a new website for ASPE's IT Division for nationwide training, I ran into a problem with my formatting. In my CSS stylesheet, I began by outlining an over-arching style to command the entire site. I noted it thus:

* {
margin-left: 0px;
margin-top: 0px;
font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, Serif;
border: 0px;
}


This CSS text would take every item in the entire website, and give it a 0 pixel border, remove any margins on the left and top, and prepare it for a serif font. This worked gloriously, allowing me to overcome many standard problems that body {} doesn't always get to.

However, I first ran into a problem with Ordered lists , and Unordered lists. Different Browsers have different margins for such lists, and setting the margin-left to 0px effectively hid the bullet or numbers of these lists. After laying in a few pages (there are close to 160 in the first phase of this project) I started to notice an issue. To show these items I had to manually set the margin on these items to show. I solved the issue by including:

ul, ol {
margin: 0em 1em 0em 0em;
padding-left: 30px;
}

This gave them a slight margin, and a strong padding to shove such items back into the page and set them apart.


The second problem came up when my horizontal rules also failed to show up. After investigating the problem, I noted that the

---

element would automatically disappear when given a border attribute.

The border element was given in the * portion of the CSS, and was subject to a border on every page, in every instance. The only solution was to completely override the master stylesheet.

I whipped out my old teaching materials, and found a seldom used element:

! important

and brought it into play. ! important overrides any element on anypage, at any time. This will override the master stylesheet, as well as inline styles. The final solution:

hr{
height:1px ! important;
border: none ! important;
background-color:#000000 ! important;
}

every time the

---

tag was used, the

---

which is invisible, is given a height (1 pixel tall), given "none" as a border condition, and given a background color of black- just in case something should go wrong.

An elegant solution to a problem which cannot be adjusted without tearing out huge portions of the website.

InDesign Tip: Save All Open InDesign Documents at one time!

Blogger Question: I keep 3 windows open in InDesign CS3 at a time when working catalog files. Is there a way I can save them all at once?



If you're a designer like me, you will often have 3-4 InDesign documents open on your desk at one time (Let's not even get started on how many documents I have on my desktop... Its a running joke!). Old documents that you'll need to grab elements from, template pieces, and image grabs... Or just so much work that you have to keep everything open in order to stay on task. But, what do you do if you need to close out prior to a storm, or a quick dash out for an appointment?

CMD + Option + Shift + S

When pressed together, this function will save all of your documents back in their places without forcing you to adjust dialog boxes or InDesign settings.

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Why would you need to "save" an InDesign document? First and foremost, probably just for peace of mind issues.

Most designers feel that they cannot always trust the temporary file. While the temporary file reloads automatically on indesign start, it doesn't always work. If an error exists, the temporary file will load, and recrash InDesign.

Plus, its always a safe bet to save your work. If possible, every 15 minutes. Best practices and all that.

Thanks! And, if there are more questions you'd like to know, I'll do my best to answer them.

Tyler Dockery
Senior Partner, Knotts & Associates

What Iphone Apps I am addicted to:

WIth the new iphone being a combination wii/nintendo DS, phone, email center, text messager, mobile internet browser, what apps have I got that are addicting me?

I am addicted to:

Othello (free)
Aurora Feint (free)


Which Apps are on my phone?

First things first: I haven't bought any apps yet, and will probably not consider them for quite some time. The free Apps I feel are essential:

Othello (free) : Great you vs Computer action in the classic strategy game to control territory
Stones (free) : A 2-player only version of Go. I am not good, but getting better.
Voicenotes (free) : Take voice-recorded notes and play them back later
ReMovem free (free) : because I have a daughter. The IPhone version of macintosh program OTIS. Otis is available for the iPhone for roughly $3.99
flashlight (free) : Good in a pinch. Don't laugh, it works.
Jirbo Match (free) : Because I have a daughter. Memory is good for children's mental development
LOL cats (free) : Because I need to smile every now and then
Aurora Feint (free) : Match game with time limits and goals to reach.
Zenbe Lists (free) : grocery lists with checkoffs. Awesome. Internet synching still turns me off, but lists work without it.

Purchasing the iPhone

After trying and trying to get my verizon account in order, I had a funny experience the other day. While playing with my daughter at a friends' house, her Godfather thought it might be humorous to push me in the pool.

It was, I laughed. Everybody laughed. Everyone I've told about it laughs. My phone and wallet were in my pocket. My verizon razor phone flashed disco lights for about 5 days, and then went off permanently.

I decided the time was RIPE for me to get an iPhone. The biggest hurdle: getting my wife on board. The strategy: she gets one too, and I buy them. She thought this was a very very bad idea. After I discussed my need, she promptly announced that she would read the bad reviews online, and visit the website.

The conversation went a little something like this: "Aha! it says right here.. Ooh! But doesn't... Ahh! Um... Hm... GPS built right in?..."

So we went down and bought in. The apple store was hopping, but the employees weren't breaking a sweat. Our line wait was about 3 minutes before a service person pulled us right out and got our order started.

I was a little weirded out that we HAD to sign up right there on the spot for a plan. We ordered 700 minutes between the two of us and unlimited internet access for roughly $170 a month. Additional people would be about $5 each. I'll have to see about getting a plan for the entire Knotts & Associates team....

Later, I went back and doubled my minutes at the AT&T store: Total price? $20 more. 1400 minutes per month which rollover, and unlimited nights, weekends, and mobile-to-mobile. What a great deal!! I'm part of the olde garde, and did not want any text messaging. While this normally would have cost us $0.15 to receive, and an additional $0.30 I opted to have all text messages blocked from my phone.

Whether I count turning off text messaging, or switching to the iPhone: Best decisions I ever made.