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!

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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.
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Foster D. Coburn III

Foster D. Coburn III built his first Web site in 1995 and he has been working exclusively in WordPress since 2013. He has used the Divi theme exclusively since 2015. Earlier in his career he was the 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.