Could not open "file name" because it is not the right kind of document

Carol,

If you are opening files over a network or saving them to a network server, cease and desist immediately. That’s a BIG no-no.

See:

Buko "Issues When Working from Networks or Removable Media" 3/23/03 11:02am </cgi-bin/webx?14/0>

and:

<http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/19dd2.htm?code=TA>

Copy the CLOSED file from your server to your local HD, work on it, save it again to your HD, close it, and copy the closed file back to the server.

And, yes, any non-UNIX characters anywhere in the path (file, folder and drives) should be eliminated. Use only numbers and the letters of the English alphabet, nothing else.

And always add the extension to the file name.

How have you tried opening the files? From the Open dialog? With "Show All Files" Selected? As various file types to see if any work?

Ramón – I did copy the files from the server to my local hard drive. I did not try to open any of these files over the network. I have already looked at the posts you recommend. The files with the non-unix characters and no extensions were created before I began working here. I always add an extension.

jonf – Yes, I tried opening the files from the Open dialog. The file name is grayed out. When I "Get Info", the file type shows up as a document. If I add the extension to the file name, the file name is not grayed out in the Open dialog, but I get the error message:
‘iCould not open "file name.xxx" because the parser cannot parse the file.

Thank you both for your posts!

Do you have any other suggestions? I really don’t want to have to open all of these files in Illustrator and export them as Tiffs and reopen them in Photoshop and then have to recreate clipping paths. Any info you might have to offer is greatly appreciated. What are your thoughts about upgrading to CS?

If they were saved to a winders server they could have the resource forks stripped off. this is why its a good idea to save with the extension. you talk about the files being eps at first now you refer to them as tiffs. Do you really know what they are??

I suggest putting each extension at the end of the file and try to open it until you get the right file type. Once you figure it out. always save the file with the extension

Bucko – Thank you for your post.

It has been my practice to always put extensions on files – it must have come from my PC background. Anyway, the files in question are files that were created before I began working here four years ago. All of the files were saved as either EPS or TIFF. Unfortunately, the people before me did not save the files with extensions. As for the file type, I have tried checking the files using "Get Info" and opening the files in Word with no success.

I mentioned TIFF files because the work around we discovered involves opening the files in Illustrator and exporting them as TIFF files. I have since found out that I can save the files as EPS files from Illustrator and open them in Photoshop. I also now know that we loose our clipping paths whether or not we export as TIFF or save as EPS.

One more note: After your post, our IT department tried opening one of the known problem files on a PC version of Photoshop after adding a file extension. This attempt was unsuccessful. I am not sure what error messages was received. I believe it was an unknown file type.

Does anyone have any other suggestions as to how I can get Photoshop to recognize these files? Please help!

Those files maybe damaged beyond repair.

Carol,

I agree with Buko’s assessment in post #7. The files may have indeed been saved over the network to the server before you got there.

As a last resort, have you tried opening them in Graphic Converter?

NO! The files are not damaged beyond repair!!!!

The cause of this is related to the different methods AFS and SMB use to keep track of a file’s resource fork and HFS+ metadata (like file type and creator type) which aren’t supported natively by the PC.

Please do not waste your time trying to go the "salvage these files by adding a filename extension" approach that many might suggest, or into believing that your files are some how damaged beyond repair. They are not damaged! They’re simply in a format that SMB can’t handle.

See Marcel Bresink’s excellent page on his "Fork Server Helper" application. <http://www.bresink.de/osx/ForkServerHelper.html>

The trouble that’s occurring in your situation is that when you use the PC to run SFM, your lovely Windows server uses its own way of dealing with Mac resource forks, which are supported, in a sense, at the very core of the NTFS file system itself, which supports forks. This method is different than the "Apple Double" method OS X uses when it writes to a Windows server connected via SMB. They’re not cross-compatible.

This is directly from his help files (which I couldn’t find online, but which are too excellent not to post):

"Problems arise in this situation because the three file sharing standards supported by Mac OS X use a different way of handling and encoding Macintosh resource forks:

AFP can handle Macintosh resource forks natively.

NFS does not support Macintosh resource forks by default but Mac OS X emulates resource forks on NFS file systems using hidden "dot underscore" files. If the original file is called Sample, the resource fork is saved into a second file with the name ._Sample.

CIFS/SMB will also be treated using "dot underscore" files as explained above, when Mac OS X is writing Macintosh files using this network protocol. Additionally, CIFS/SMB is capable of supporting multi-fork files when it is used with the professional line of Microsoft Windows operating systems (Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP): If you use AFP to store a file on a Windows file server which can be done by using Microsoft Services for Macintosh (SFM), Windows will use a representation of the resource fork which is different from that of a native Macintosh system. However, if you later use CIFS/SMB to copy such a file back to a Mac OS X file server, the SFM representation of the resource fork will not be reconverted to a native representation. Windows and Mac OS X will leave the representation as it is. If the original file has the name Sample, resource fork components are stored to three additional files with the names Sample:AFP_afpInfo:$DATA, Sample:AFP_Resource$DATA and Sample:Comments$DATA."

So your solution is to get the PC server with its SFM back up and running, or perhaps use Fork Server Helper to try to attack it from the Mac side of things.

Hope this helps….

Mark – Thank you for your post. I have discussed this with my IT department and we are going to try the Fork Server Helper.

If anyone is still following this post, I appreciate any assistance you can offer. As Mark suggested, I have tried using Fork Server Helper. Unfortunately, it did not fix the problem. After I ran Fork Server Helper, I went to check to see if Photoshop would recognize the files. It did not. I received the message: "Could not open ‘file name’ because it is not the right kind of document."
Both my colleague and myself down loaded, installed and attempted the Fork Server Helper software. It seemed to have done something, what, we are not sure.

I still cannot open any files that were saved to the server via AFP without an extension. I can no longer connect to the server via AFP – my only option to connect is via SMB. Does anyone have any suggestions! I am getting desperate!

Thank you in advance for your assistance!

While I’m not sure it’s necessarily going to help you’re specific situation, I’ve consolidated this information into a FAQ <http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?128@@.689391fc> in the Apple Discussions Boards.

Unfortunately, I don’t have that much experience with using Fork Server Helper, as I’ve primarily relied on OS X’s built-in method of transferring files to PC servers via SMB (which uses the Apple Double method). In the bit of time I spent playing around with FSH, I did find it somewhat confusing as to how it worked.

Also, I should’ve looked a little more before I said I couldn’t find the manual online, as it is indeed online at <http://www.bresink.de/osx/DocsForkServerHelper/index.html>.

So what happened that you can no longer connect to the server via AFP?

Mark:

Thanks for your post and for the consolidation of this post as a FAQ in the Apple Discussion Boards. I have skimmed over the FAQ and it looks like there might be some useful information in it. I have printed it out and will look at it in more depth later.

As for what happened to our AFP connection, it was lost after our PC server crashed. Several attempts were made to re-establish the connection short of taking the server down. Our IT guys are very reluctant to take the server down because of all those darn PCs connected to the same server 🙂 . We are only 2 Macs in a PC corporation. The good of the many outweighs the good of the few. Don’t get me wrong, our IT guys are usually very helpful. I know we are due for some sort of Windows upgrade in the next couple of months.

something I ran into the other day.

I was opening some PDFs of a job I had done previously and was saving them as .PSDs in a new folder. some how the save as dialog was changed from PSD to TIF. since I was clicking on a previous title to rename the file the .psd was showing in the name but the files were really TIFs. when I came back to open the file later I got the "Not a valid Photoshop file" message. changing the extension back to tif file opened just fine.

so I guess the moral of the story is make sure you are saving the correct type of file that matches the extension.

Changing the extension until you find the correct one may help in opening the files.

In this case, Photoshop should have added ‘.tif’ to the end of your ‘filename.psd’ file. That procedure is clearly spelled out in Apple’s Developer documentation.

The file you saved still had a file type of "TIFF", while it had a filename extension of ".psd". If Photoshop is going to choke on a file like that when trying to read it back in, it should not have allowed the file to be saved that way in the first place. You’d think a several hundred dollar program might also consult the file type, or heaven forbid, examine the first little bit of the file to see if it matches any known structure, before choking and vomiting out an error message like that.

The following AppleScript uses the ‘file’ shell command to attempt to determine the type of information in a file without the need for the file to have a filename extension or file type. It first uses the ‘cp’ (copy) shell command to create a copy of the original file. By using the ‘cp’ command, the copied version of the file is left without any HFS+ metadata information such as creator type and file type information (which, BTW, is stored in the HFS+ disk directory, NOT in the file’s resource fork). The filename extension of the original file is removed as well, to illustrate the fact that it’s the internal data that’s used to determine the type of file. (A unique number is tacked onto the end of the file’s name so as to reduce the likelihood of overwriting an existing file.)

–Open this script in a new Script Editor window < applescript://com.apple.scripteditor?action=new&script=s et%20time_%20to%20time%20of%20(current%20date)%0Aset%20file_ %20to%20choose%20file%20with%20prompt%20%22Choose%20the%20fi le%20to%20examine%3A%22%0Aset%20file_info_%20to%20info%20for %20file_%0Aset%20myst_doc_name_%20to%20(text%201%20thru%20-( ((length%20of%20name%20extension%20of%20file_info_)%20+%202) )%20of%20name%20of%20file_info_)%20%26%20time_%20as%20string %0Aset%20POSIX_myst_doc__path_%20to%20(text%201%20thru%20-(( length%20of%20name%20of%20file_info_)%20+%201))%20of%20POSIX %20path%20of%20file_%20%26%20myst_doc_name_%20as%20string%0A do%20shell%20script%20%22cp%20%22%20%26%20quoted%20form%20of %20POSIX%20path%20of%20file_%20%26%20%22%20%22%20%26%20quote d%20form%20of%20POSIX_myst_doc__path_%0Ado%20shell%20script% 20%22file%20%22%20%26%20quoted%20form%20of%20POSIX_myst_doc_ _path_ >.

set time_ to time of (current date)
set file_ to choose file with prompt "Choose the file to examine:" set file_info_ to info for file_
set myst_doc_name_ to (text 1 thru -(((length of name extension of file_info_) + 2)) of name of file_info_) & time_ as string
set POSIX_myst_doc__path_ to (text 1 thru -((length of name of file_info_) + 1)) of POSIX path of file_ & myst_doc_name_ as string
do shell script "cp " & quoted form of POSIX path of file_ & " " & quoted form of POSIX_myst_doc__path_
do shell script "file " & quoted form of POSIX_myst_doc__path_

Thanks for the last post! 🙂
I was unable to get the script to work (I don’t have much experience with using scripts). However, I did venture to the Terminal (scary territory for me) and began checking the true file types. After I added the true extension to the file name along with removing the non-standard charters I had no problem dropping the file on the Photoshop icon in the dock to open the files.

Thanks again!!!!

Carol

I fear it’s a problem with the server, ie Microsoft translating your files and re-translating them when you ‘ask’ them back from the server. Now that the afp service is no longer running you are probably caught halfway in the system.

Can you send me a file so that I can try to figure out how to work around it?

Sorry ’bout that, I updated my FAQ and the original link broke. New link is here <http://discussions.info.apple.com/WebX?128@@.68947ac6>.

I’m actually doing a little research at the moment to become more familiar with the Services For Macintosh deal and how it works…..

wrote in message news:…

Sorry ’bout that, I updated my FAQ and the original link broke. New link is here <http://discussions.info.apple.com/WebX?128@@.68947ac6>.

I’m actually doing a little research at the moment to become more familiar with the Services For Macintosh deal and how it works…..

I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination but using Windows NT I go to my server and using filemanager/macfile/associate I change the dos file type from Illustrator to Photoshop. There is a PSD extension so just copy that information to the EPS extension. Might work??

Also I have been using this network for over 5 years and we NEVER copy to our local disks and the file creator types are always kept in order.

The only problem we have is if the files are copied by a PC on our network they loose the creator type unless they have an extension.

The reason I checked into this post is because I have just started up an OS X machine that will not read the file types correct unless it has made them. The rest of the machines are OS 9. I am going to review the FAQ for more info.

John