Quark Forums

In reviewing my back up I noticed 2 QuarkXPress documents open with unreadable type. Is there anything I can do to get them back to their original readable copy? I have 2 documents like this, they were saved the same day. These are my backup copies so there aren't any other versions of them. Thanks for your help. http://i36.tinypic.com/110dpv8.jpg

You're seeing the raw code that makes up a file, it looks as though they are not being recognized as XPress documents. Try adding a .qxp to the end of the file names, after confirming the addition of the extension make sure they show Quark icons in the Finder. If they don't then open properly via double-click try going into XPress and choosing Open from within the application.

JRS, thanks for the reply. I tried what you suggested and it worked. I had copied this and a 2nd document from my backup drive and they were ok. As a safety measure i saved a copy of both with an "a" added to the name. These files have changed from Quark icons to this strange icon 3 different times. Yesterday I repaired the HD permissions and that seem to work. When I double clicked my HD the documents were back to the strange icon. The other strange thing is that the "a" version is nowhere to be found, yet last night they were both there. Do you have any suggestions on how to make these documents stable? These 2 documents are very similar having jpgs linked to them, if that matters. Thanks again.

JRS, just an update: When I click upon the HD on the desktop there are the 2 strange icons and the 2 new documents with the qxp extension. When I open thru Quark I see the 2 "a" documents. The regular strange and qxp documents do not appear.

 

Hi Frank,

Without going into a lot of technical background, the short answer is to just always manually add the .qxp extension to your filenames when saving. When you keep them on the Mac drive, they should have additional file metadata that will cause them to be recognized as Quark documents even without those extensions. But it sounds as though your backup device is losing that metadata, in which case you may need the extensions. And if a file has the extension but is not recognizing a double-click, you can always open the file from within the application. (You can also try using Get Info in the Finder on one .qxp file, make sure the Open With pop-up displays QuarkXPress, then click the Change All button to tell the system to always open .qxp files with XPress.)

Hope this helps,

John

Hi John. Just checked and the documents with the qxp extension are gone. They aren't visible neither on the desktop or when I open thru quark. The only documents I see are the 2 I renamed with the "a" added to the name. This means that the strange icon documents are gone and so are the qxp documents. I got info and the 2 remaining documents are chosen to open with Quark 8,1. Any thoughts on what could be happening, all the other documents are stable and ok. I had just done a reverse backup to go back to OS5 from OS6. OS6 created font conflicts which kept me from using helvetica and helvetica neue. So I actually restored all my OS5 data, I'm going to create the qxp documents again and see if they are still there tomorrow.

Sorry, I can 't really think what might be going on here, or why it would be specific to those files. Might have had something to do with the OS change, but personally I'm still on 10.4.11, with one Leopard Mac I do limited testing on. So about the only advice I can give right now is to keep backing them up to more than one location, and to continue to post here if you see any other problems or have any observations which might lend a clue to what is happening.
John