File Extension Can Be the Difference Between Success and Failure

June 23, 2014

I’m sure there are people who shake their head when I suggest you should Display File Extensions in Windows. As I was training a group of apparel designers last week, the importance of this setting was on full display.

This company does a lot of work in both Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW X7. That means there are files that have to be transferred between the two programs on a regular basis. One of the troublesome files we were discussing was saved from Adobe Illustrator in the “AI” format and thus had the AI file extension.

When the file was important as an Adobe Illustrator (AI) file, some of the objects were problematic. Since I knew that many AI files are simply PDF files in disguise, I changed the file extension to PDF. Nothing inside the file changed, just the extension on the file saved on disc.

The results of importing the PDF file into CorelDRAW was quite different and the objects came in looking the same as in Adobe Illustrator. I can’t stress enough how important it is to see the full name of the file including the file extension as it can be the difference between success and failure!

Post Discussion

1 Comment

Anonymous on June 25, 2014 at 2:17 pm

You can do the same thing without changing the file extension by selecting “import files of type–pdf” while importing the ,ai file.
Reply

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Don’t Share Facebook Scam Posts and How To Spot Them

Facebook has been in the news a lot lately for not doing enough to stop misinformation. Today I want to described one specific type of post that continues to show up from time to time and people are still falling for it. Let's look at one I...

Tips to Protect Yourself From a Ransomware Attack

Ransomware has been all over the news recently. First it shut down an important pipeline on the East Coast of the US and then meat processing plants. Criminals have been hitting these high-profile targets because they often lead to huge paydays....

Use Cleaning Gel on Keyboards, Laptops and More

Keyboards can be pretty disgusting. Apart from looking bad and being covered with germs, some of that dirt can prevent them from working well. A few years ago I took a very drastic step to get a keyboard clean. If you don't remember it, check...

Foster D. Coburn III

Foster D. Coburn III is author of 13 best-selling books on CorelDRAW and has been a contributor to numerous technology and graphics-related magazines. Foster has taken many projects, including this Web site, from the early design stage through to a finished piece. He has been a featured speaker at many graphics conferences. His first Web site was built in 1995 and he has been working exclusively in WordPress since 2013.