Adobe Illustrator CS3 Will Not Let You Save

When working in Adobe Illustrator CS3 last night, I hit the ultimate point of frustration when my application refused to allow me to save any document in .AI (native Illustrator) format. I just finished working on a magazine ad for a client, and all of a sudden a rush of fear overwhelmed me as I thought I was going to lose all of my work.

After doing some research on the web, I came across an article on the Adobe Forums that had several workaround solutions. After implementing them successfully, I thought I would share the information.

One of the issues seems to be a compatibility problem between Zune and Adobe Illustrator CS3. Microsoft explains it as the following in the article located at http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb403151&sliceId=1 :

"The Zune Team has investigated this issue. The issue is that Zune(2.1 and greater, along with many other applications) send input (via virtual keys) prior to setting foreground window. Zune does this at startup...and when a device is connected. Most apps use a specific virtual key for this, and in this case after the adobe app gets this key it will fail to save.

We have contacted adobe support with this information along with a sample repro to allow them to resolve the issue with input handling.

_Zach Johnson(zjohnson@microsoft.com)
Zune Product Team"

Here are some workarounds until they figure it out:

1. If you have the Zune Software and Illustrator open at the same time, it could be as simple as exiting out of Zune and then trying to save.

2. If that doesn't work and you are in Illustrator and have Zune running, and cannot afford to lose your progress: open up task manager (CTRL+ALT+DEL), go to "processes", kill any Zune processes running.

3. If that still doesn't work, try saving the file as an EPS. You can also save the Illustrator file and make sure that you uncheck "Create PDF Compatible File" in the save options dialog box. Reboot, kill all of the Zune processes as described in step two, open up the Illustrator or EPS file, and resave.

It was also noted that the programs 'Avira' and 'NOD 32' have a similar issue with Illustrator. If you do not have a Zune or the above options do not help, try exiting these programs before saving.

The full article is located at http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3c05392c.

- Presario