Flash CS5 Crash corrupted files. How can I get my xml library assets back into a new FLA?

Question

I started using Flash CS5 (and it sucks btw, but that's not my issue today). I spent many hours working on a .FLA file. Saving as I went and at one point Flash CS5 crashed during the save. The .fla file is now corrupt. The new .fla format is essentially a .zip file. So I was able to change the file name to *.zip and explore inside of it. The DOMDocument.xml file is corrupt and dead. The DOMDocument.xml is the timeline so all my placement and animation is gone. However, my LIBRARY folder is in tact and has all of my library items as *.xml files.

I was wondering if anyone know how I can get those library items into another .fla file so I don't lose ALL my work?

I've tried creating a new .fla file and dragging the LIBRARY folder into the new .fla, but my library items don't show up when I load the new .fla in the Flash CS5 IDE.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I was able to work through a series of hacks to recover my library items. Here are the steps:

1. Rename your corrupt FLA file with a new extension .zip.

2. Explore the .ZIP file and locate the 'LIBRARY' folder.

3. Copy the XML files from the LIBRARY folder to another location somewhere on your drive.

4. Create a new default FLA file and save it.

5. Change the file extension of your new FLA to .zip

6. Explore your new .zip file and locate the 'LIBRARY' folder. It should be empty.

7. Put your saved XML library item files into the new 'LIBRARY' folder inside the zip.

8. Open the DOMDocument.xml file in an XML editor (Notepad will work).

9. Add the following symbol node:

   <DOMDOcument ... > <symbols> <Include href="LibraryItemHere.xml" loadImmediate="false"/> </symbols> ... </DOMDocument>

10. Make sure to have an Include node for each library item you want to recover.

11. Change the file extension back to a *.fla

12. Open the file with Flash IDE and your library items are available to you again.

13. (optional) Do a SAVE AS into a Flash CS4 file and delete Flash CS5 from your computer until Adobe fixes the problem.

Hope this helps someone else.

Answer 2

I ran into a similar problem. My FLA was causing Flash CS5 to crash when trying to open the file. I changed the .fla to a .zip, but rather than reconstructing a new source file using parts of the corrupted one, I simply cut out parts of the DOMDocument.xml until I found where the problem was. I did not have to re-zip the file back up each time, but simply tried to launch from the .xfl and when the file successfully opened, I knew I had cut out the corrupted segment. Pretty quickly, I found that the problem was somewhere in the timeline and then by process of elimination I found the frame where the problem existed.

Eventually I determined that the following line of code was the problem:

<DOMRectangleObject objectWidth="6.65" objectHeight="-83209469.35" x="83364290.3" y="83364713.35" lockFlag="true"/>

This was the only DOMRectangleObject tag I could find that was self-closing; all others had stroke and fill information. When I deleted this node, my file launched exactly as it should. I zipped it back up and it was good as new.

Answer 3

I got similar problem, with the fla file. I followed the instructions, but did some more stuff: After unzipping the file, I managed to recreate it with an empty DOMDocument.xml file. The stage did not include any frames or layers. I then, recreated the file adding some more stuff from the original file. It took me some tries (each time zipping and renaming) to figure out that a single text box in a single frame caused the fla file to be corrupted. I removed a weird character shown in the textbox and all worked surprisingly well. I think the weird character was a shift-enter key.

Thanks for the tips, you saved me 5 hours.

Answer 4

This error happened to me with an (innocence!) hard-reset of my computer while the FLA was still open.

I'll just leave this here... https://www.designcontest.com/forum/adobe-flash/63637-how-recover-damaged-corrupt-files-adobe-flash.html

"4.Select Tools>Repair Archive. This will make sure that the archive and FLA is repaired."

Pure, internet poetry... ಥ_ಥ