Unexpected file format???

[parkedcar]

I have Ultraflex 7.XX which is the same as flexi...
Suddenly it wont open one of my files.... and its a very important file with a ton of stuff i need. Its comes up "unexpected file format"
It will show the preview of the file, but will not open. Is there anyway to get into it??? Maybe a plug in for illustrator to open .fs files.......
I have a back up drive...and for whatever reason, the whole file isnt on it...computer automatically backs up every hour....and most of the file is missing as far back as a year.
I'm so screwed if i cant work this out...
Thanks for any help!

 

[zmatalucci]

this has happened to me several times... another reason why flexi is an over priced POS

 

[parkedcar]

How did you get around it?

 

[CS-SignSupply]

Email the file in question to me and I will try to open if you like. If it opens, I can re-save in several formats.

 

[zmatalucci]

I havent found a way around it, other than to use AI instaed

 

[Kwiksigns]

what kind of file? Mine does that sometimes... I use to have a problem opening .psd until Photoshop was installed. So maybe you need the native program for the files?

 

[parkedcar]

It was a .fs file.

Cibersupply was nice enough to try and open it with flexi 8 with no luck.
Not sure what im going to do now...
What i dont understand is why only 42kb of the 2.9mb file is saved on my back up for all of 2010...
This happened about 2 weeks ago with the same file, but i was able to restore from my back up....now its not all there.

 

[Steph_Stamm]

Hey Parked Car, sorry about the file! If you haven't already, try contacting our tech support department to see if they can help you out. You can call them for free at 1800.229.9044. You can also try emailing eSupport@saintl.biz. Tell them I sent you.

Steph

 

[Border]

If it's a file that you'll seriously be screwed without and the time it takes to try and duplicate whatever was there is just too great....
I would suggest to try and run a recovery program on that hard drive. It might just find the good version that was somehow deleted or corrupted.

I've had totally remarkable results with a recovery program called "Stellar Phoenix" when several other programs would not find anything....It takes quite a while to run but it preserves the directories and folders rather than just spewing out a million bajillian random files that you have then sort through and rename/reorganize.

Just 2 weeks ago, I had a 4GB camera card go corrupt for when a card reader went bad. Got a new card reader and ran that recovery program and it actually recovered well over 5GB of photos and video from that 4GB card. -Some that I had previously deleted intentionally.

 

[visual800]

ah the infamous "UNEXPECTED FILE FORMAT" in flexi. It's a sick feeling. Ive tried importing and everything else under the sun. Its for some reason no help at all and I dont know how it happens. one day files are fi flexi files due to this errorn and the next day you get this error. I have all files saved and I lost ALL OF flexi files due to this error

I dont understand it. I love flexi but when it does this I swear I could scream

 

[signcrafters london]

It hasn't happened to me in a long time. Back in the day I used to open a new file, then import the bad file. Sometimes it would let me save the new file and things would be fine. Sometimes I couldn't reopen the new file after it was saved, either. But I was always able to import the bad files into a new file every time.

 

[cwstevens]

This hasn't happened to me for several years. But today, it happened again, just like old times! (been with flexi for over 30 years) - have a flexi drawing with a good 6 hours into it across yesterday and this morning.
had saved progress several times today, maybe 20 minutes along and wasn't doing anything complex, just selecting objects when I got the infamous prompt everyone with any time spent in flexi has experienced: "Fatal exception has occurred" - often times the only way to get out is to force flexi to close, and lose progress, but this was the rare exception where it prompted me to save any open files, which I let it save, now when I open said file with 6+hrs of design time, I get the "unexpected file format" prompt! Tried restarting computer, importing, open on another scomputer, all to no avail. I have asked Tech support if they have any resolve but will likely ask our IT dept to at least restore the file to yesterday so I only lose like 2 1/2 hours of setup. So effing frustrating. Nothing worse than having to redraw hours of setup!

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

After almost 15 years, I don't imagine much of this thread is still relevant today, unless using a really old version of Flexi.