Installation & update
About program installation and update, hardware, operating systems, setup, etc.

Files corrupting when closed.

Anonymous
Not applicable
I have recently had a couple of files not close properly and change into text files.

When closing the file rather than the 'Do you want to save?' prompt the file will just close and then a text file is created, the .bpn disappears and the .pln file reverts to the last saved version. There doesn't appear to be any crash occurring and no recovery file appears when I next open Archicad.

Has anyone else had this happen to them?

The text file has the name 'GeneratedName_1790375447' and seems to just be a random assortment of letters and symbols.

Is there any way anyone can think to recover this file?
3 REPLIES 3
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
Your screenshots tell us you're on a Mac... so what version of MacOS are you on? What version and build of ARCHICAD is this happening with (About dialog)? Is your file being stored locally, or on a network... or in a synced folder (e.g., Dropbox etc - which is not recommended)?

If you do a "Save" (or cmd-S), is a proper PLN saved? So, is this only happening if you Quit ARCHICAD after having made unsaved changes?

Have you called tech support?
One of the forum moderators
AC 28 USA and earlier   •   macOS Sequoia 15.2, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
runxel
Legend
Had the same issue on a PC lately for the first time.
Wondering too what happened there.
Lucas Becker | AC 27 on Mac | Graphisoft Insider Panelist | Author of Runxel's Archicad Wiki | Editor at SelfGDL | Developer of the GDL plugin for Sublime Text | My List of AC shortcomings & bugs | I Will Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again |

POSIWID – The Purpose Of a System Is What It Does /// «Furthermore, I consider that Carth... yearly releases must be destroyed»
Podolsky
Ace
I've seen something like that when ArchiCAD saves PDF files. It creates these temporary files and after deletes them. If you are not getting final file (PLN in your case) and this temporary file stays on drive - that means the saving process was somehow interrupted.
This is not text file - it's proper file in binary format. You can open any file in text editor and it will show you strange symbols as in your case.
Try to rename the file and add extension PLN. Maybe it will work. But if saving process was interrupted - there is no guarantee that this file will be openable in ArchiCAD after you add PLN extension.