Help for a friend whose helping a friend

As the title says, I'm trying to help a friend help her friend. I know nothing on autocad but I figured I'd help by asking/searching the web.

I am posting this for a friend; is there ANY way to fix an autocad 2006 drawing file when the message "Drawing File Not Valid" appears???

 

She saved it as a 2006 file, and when she came to open it in autocad 2008, it gave this message. You can open 2006 files in newer generations; how can the file be corrupted all of a sudden?

I just copied and pasted what was type at another place. From what I understand, the file was created on a school computer and transferred to her computer which has 2008 on it. I read about .bak files but from what I understand, she only grabbed the .dwg file (if I'm making sense..). More than likely the data on the school computer is lost since most school computers typically refresh after every restart. Is there anything she can do with that file she has with her? Thanks in advance.

That message will pop up if you're trying to open a file that was created in a newer version of Autocad or if the file is corrupt. What version was she using when she created the file? There is no 2006 format, so she could have only saved it in 2007, 2004, 2002 or R14 format, but all of those formats can be opened by 2008. Unless she was using 2010 when she created the drawing?

She could try running the RECOVER command. If the drawing is salvageable, Recover might be able to open it.

Ok I'll go ahead and relay this information to her and I'll update the thread. Thanks.

Looks like it was a typo. She told me it was created and modified in autocad 2004 and she tried to open it in autocad 2008. She also tried running the recover command with no success. I don't know much about autocad and I can tell things aren't looking very good. I don't suppose there are any other commands she could try or anything she could download that might possibly help right?

Well, there's not much you can do with a corrupt drawing. If she can get hold of the .bak file, she can rename it to .dwg and probably get most of her work back, but how much work are we talking about? Was this a big complex drawing or just something simple that can easily be re-drawn?

Something else she could try is using the "Partial Open" feature to load the drawing one layer at a time until she finds a layer containing an error and then skip that layer next time.

Thanks for trying. I'll let her know about the link. I'm going to head to bed so if anything happens, I'll be sure to let you know. Thanks again I appreciate it.

Something else she could try is using the "Partial Open" feature.......

I'd never heard of this, and was actually excited to give it a try. My joy didn't last long though, it's just another thing not available to me in 2005 LT. Darn.