• Global community
    • Language:
      • Deutsch
      • English
      • Español
      • Français
      • Português
  • 日本語コミュニティ
    Dedicated community for Japanese speakers
  • 한국 커뮤니티
    Dedicated community for Korean speakers
Exit
Locked
2

Help: Either the file does not exist, you do not have permission, or the file may be in use

Community Beginner ,
Apr 09, 2012 Apr 09, 2012

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I really need some serious help -- can't open my Indesign file. It says "Either the file does not exist, you do not have permission, or the file may be in use by another application." Been working all weekend to finish this project and I just don't know what to do now.

Here's the chronology of events:

1. I saved my document last night, but left the document open in Indesign and the computer on when I went to take a nap. When I Indesign crashed.

2. At reboot, when I tried to open the file (which is in an external drive), it prompted me with the recovery dialog box, with choices of recovering the data or document now, later or discarding the recovery. I chose none and just "x" the dialog box. I thought if I did that, it will open the file anyway. But no, it didn't.

3. I shut down that computer (I was working with CS4 in Windows 7 where this all happened. That Windows 7 is in Macbook with dual boot - OSX and bootcamp with Windows 7. )

4. I tried to open the file this time from my other Windows computer, but all it says is "Either the file does not exist, you do not have permission, or the file may be in use by another application."

I'm thinking the problem has got to do with my not dealing with the document recovery right after the software crashed. I'd like to know if there's any way for me to get that recovery or at least use/open the file that I have?

Please help and thanks in advance.

TOPICS
Performance

Views

84.2K

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines

correct answers 1 Correct answer

New Here , May 13, 2019 May 13, 2019

Copy file from source folder and paste on desktop, and open its work!

Votes

Translate

Translate
Mentor ,
Apr 09, 2012 Apr 09, 2012

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Look in the folder where the file is saved. there will be an InDesign "Lock File", .indl, which tells other users the file is open by another station.

Delete the lock file.

ID Lock file.JPG

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Apr 10, 2012 Apr 10, 2012

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thanks Daniel, I did just that yesterday and it didn't help. Still couldn't open the file. I remember reading yesterday somewhere that you have to do the recovery as soon as you reopen the program and the file. Ignoring that step or accessing your file from another computer makes the recovery impossible. Has anyone experienced this?

I'm thinking this is what happened in my case, thus no amount of recovery effort will bring back the lost recovered data.

It's not easy. I gave up hope last night and decided to just recreate the magazine, the deadline of which is today. The InDesign Lock file has advanatges, but it also has its drawbacks. Perhaps it would serve designers well if Indesign will have an option to turn that feature off.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Apr 10, 2012 Apr 10, 2012

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Sometimes choosing Open as a Copy will solve the problem, at which point you should immediately Save As with another name.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Apr 10, 2012 Apr 10, 2012

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thank you, Peter. I hope this works.I'll try that and let you know.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Sep 03, 2014 Sep 03, 2014

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Hi, I had the same problem. My solution is renema file and open as a copy. Than you can save it.

Hope it helps you!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jan 07, 2015 Jan 07, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Hi guys!

I have some problem...

  • earlyer a worked with mac.
  • i have copied all files (eg. psd, jpg, tiff) whats i use for the print from mac to a win NTFS formatted harddisk.
  • if i open an old indesign doc for edit or create a NEW indesign document in some case a can not place pictures because i get this error message like in topic adress (Either the file does not exist, you do not have permission, or the file may be in use)

Perhaps in win-mac file rights the error?

Thanks for the help!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jan 15, 2015 Jan 15, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

My solution for Win8-users:

In original harddisk was a EFI partition what can't seeing in win-explorer. And can't erase normally. Firts backup the files to an another disk. Then yuo need delete this EFI partition on harddisk (find the help: Delete an EFI partition in Windows 7 | HowTo)

Then must format the whool harddisk. Copy back the original files and it works ok!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Sep 12, 2015 Sep 12, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

My solution was to remove all special characters from the name of the file (it was a Polish Word file I could not import to InDesign CC, and there were Polish characters in the file name).

Hope it works for some of you at least!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Explorer ,
Sep 24, 2015 Sep 24, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thank you boskoff That helped me

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Sep 30, 2015 Sep 30, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I have similar problem. One person is downloading images (psg, tiff, jpg) to shared folder and other people working on them in ID. When this files have polish characters the error appears when we want insert them to ID. When changed to normal character everything is ok. But when person who is working in ID will download himself this file to same shared location everything is ok (even with polish characters). Do you have any ideas what could be changed in system?

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Sep 30, 2015 Sep 30, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Avoid extended characters as they are causing always problems in file names. Same is with German Umlaute (ÄÖÜäöü)  and sz (ß) and other symbols.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Oct 08, 2015 Oct 08, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

But everything is good when someone who is working in ID is downloading this files (with polish characters). I think there is something with user privileges on storage.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Sep 18, 2017 Sep 18, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thank you boskoff!!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Apr 23, 2018 Apr 23, 2018

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thank you so much for this! I had a very important file that corrupted and this was the key to saving it! I just took away all of the "_" and "-" and it opened right away!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Nov 05, 2015 Nov 05, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I had the same problem, rename the file and copy to a different location. Should work!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Jan 04, 2016 Jan 04, 2016

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

When opening InDesign, hold Shift+CTRL+ Alt and clear your preferences with the dialogue window that comes up. Then, when the file opens, relink the media. That fixed it for me.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Mar 29, 2016 Mar 29, 2016

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

File could not be linked within InDesign, the solution was to open InDesign and cancel the recovery of files and then close InDesign. Repeat this proccess until InDesign doesn't want to recover any more files. Open the file, link the files and the link should work correctly.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jul 07, 2016 Jul 07, 2016

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

In my case, and I'm on a Mac running El Cap 10.11.3, it had to do with the file path. I had used a forward slash in the folder name and once I changed that to a dash, the problem resolved. This seems odd, as I'm sure I've done this before, so it may have something to do with the way El Cap reads directories. Hope this helps.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jan 24, 2017 Jan 24, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I also found this to be true. In my case, a folder used for filing had a forward slash in the name. As soon as I removed it, and resaved the file, it works now.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Sep 22, 2017 Sep 22, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thanks, pony67890, that helped me.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Oct 30, 2017 Oct 30, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied


Thanks pony67890! I'm also on a Mac and you nailed it. This had been driving me crazy for weeks. Whole time it was just a slash in the parent folder for all my design files.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Nov 11, 2016 Nov 11, 2016

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

If you are using a Mac, I found a simple solution. Check to see if your images are in "Photos" (it's a preset folder). First create a new library folder by clicking the drop down arrow, select all of your images, right click and select move to "new folder". Your images should automatically relink. Hope it works for you.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Explorer ,
Aug 30, 2017 Aug 30, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Good evening folks.

Oh I know that problem very well

Lucky you, I found the solution (99% of the cases)

Simply rename your document, including the ".doc/docx" extension and... Magic (encoding pb btw differents OS / Languages)

You are welcome

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Apr 18, 2018 Apr 18, 2018

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

how do you rename it when you can't open it

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines