Failed to recover a faulty Illustrator AI file online

Recovery Toolbox for Illustrator may be able to recover your corrupted AI file.

Reasons for unsuccessful AI file recovery

Possible reasons why Illustrator Online Recovery Service was unable to recover a damaged Illustrator file (AI file):

Here is a list of the most common reasons why the online AI file recovery service (Adobe Illustrator vector graphics files) may not be able to handle a damaged file:

1. The file has zero size (file size is 0 bytes).
2. The file is filled with zero bytes or is almost empty.
3. The file is severely truncated due to a record break, i.e., a large part of the file is missing.
4. Complete overwriting of the file with zeros or garbage due to a disk failure.
5. Incorrect recovery of a file deleted from the Windows Recycle Bin.
6. Incorrect recovery of a damaged HDD.
7. Broken PDF/PS container structure inside the AI file.
8. No cross-reference/trailer inside the AI file.
9. The file is encrypted or password-protected. The service does not recover encrypted files.
10. A very old (or very new) AI file format is used, which is not supported by the service analyzer.
11. Severe data fragmentation in the file and, as a result, object chains cannot be logically assembled.
12. Tables and offset indexes are damaged, making it impossible to restore links.
13. The file is not actually an Adobe Illustrator project. The AI extension has been incorrectly assigned to the file.
14. The file was created by third-party software that is not fully compatible with Adobe Illustrator.
15. Network transmission has truncated/distorted bytes, e.g., ASCII mode/CRLF.
16. The archive (ZIP/RAR) containing the file is damaged and not everything has been unpacked.
17. Connection failure during download and recovery.
18. The file contains non-standard binary attachments that are ignored by the recovery service analyzer.
19. Embedded images (link/embed) have damaged the object stream.
20. Embedded fonts/metadata are corrupted and break the recovery service analyzer.
21. Gradient meshes/appearance data are corrupted and cannot be interpreted correctly.
22. Character/pattern definitions are corrupted and links point to nowhere.
23. Layer/group/artboard graphs are broken.
24. Cyclic references in layers/groups/artboards.
25. Live Effects/transparencies contain incorrect parameters.
26. Advanced attributes (blend modes, overprint, spot colors) have incorrect data.
27. Inserted external plugins saved proprietary blocks that are inaccessible without them.
28. Part of the data stream with geometry (path data) is physically lost.
29. Incorrect coordinates/transformations contain NaN/inf and crash the recovery tool.
30. Encoding conflict (UTF-8/UTF-16/Win-1251) in text blocks.
31. XMP metadata is corrupted and 'breaks' the beginning/end of the file.
32. Compression failure (Flate/ZIP/LZW) and stream decoding is impossible.
33. The embedded ICC color profile is corrupted.
34. The file was partially recovered earlier by a foreign utility and became internally inconsistent.
35. Integrity errors after virus encryption.
36. Errors due to bad sectors on the media and local holes in critical areas.
37. Session/temporary data (recovery data) has been overwritten in the file.
38. Style tables are damaged, without which the display is incorrect.
39. Inconsistencies in units of measurement/grid documentation cause the system to crash during recalculations.
40. The file has unusual compression or filters that the service does not implement.
41. The order of objects after truncation is mixed up and these dependencies are unsolvable.
42. Access rights or security policy error, causing the file to be read incompletely.
43. Antivirus programs have partially cut out suspicious bytes from the file.