"Could not open file" Help me not lose my animation please

I have randomly received an error stating that Pencil2d “there was an error processing your file. This usually means the file is at least partially corrupted.” I saw a post about this before and some of the file was able to be recovered. I would like assistance so that I don’t lose all the animation I worked on. Thanks.

@bramsilbert Hi. Sorry for the delay, it seems the automated system moderator hid the post from mods. I undeleted the post to answer you. In these cases we have a guide to cover most potential solutions, but it may be too late depending on the situation.

That said, basically when a file is corrupted you can either lose:

  1. Just the “main” internal file that hints the program how the images should be presented in the software, as well as some of the drawings. This is what most people can recover by following the guide.
  2. Everything else. The file is done for.

The quickest way to know if you can recover something is to make a copy of the file, change the format extension and open it with a ZIP file manager (all of this is explained in the guide)

If the Zip file manager does not show anything, it’s most likely that your file is unfortunately lost.


Digital artwork and animation software at large will always have this issue, and from experience I always recommend forming a habit of saving multiple extra copies of the animation. If you work 30 days, you should at least have 30 files, one per day. Sometimes it can be a blackout, a faulty hard drive, or an operating system update. One never knows what can trigger the corruption of your files.

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