Illustrator Tutorial

Save As Legacy AI

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Subject: This tutorial covers saving Adobe Illustrator CS files as AI 3, 8, 9, or 10.

Prerequisites: Adobe Illustrator CS file (*.ai) and knowledge of physical file location.

Steps:

Start AI CS and open your *.ai file by clicking File -> Open.... Under the "Files of Type" drop-down, select "Adobe Illustrator (*.AI,*.AIT)". Browse to the folder where you stored your *.ai file, select it, and then hit the "Open" button.
Your creation will load and then you need to click File -> Export.... Under the "Save as Type" drop-down, select "Illustrator Legacy (*.AI)". Name or rename your file and click the "Save" button.
On the next screen you have a couple of decisions to make. Under the "Version:" drop-down you have options to select version 3, 8, 9, 10, or JI 3. For my trueSpace tutorials you will need to select version 8. Otherwise, you may choose which one you need. I also check "Create PDF Compatible File" and "Use Compression". Once you have everything set the way you want, you can click Ok.

If a dialogue appears saying "Saving this document in an older format may convert all type to point type and may disable some editing features when the document is read back in. Do you want to continue?", you can just click Yes, but make sure that you still have the original CS file and have not overwritten it.

This is a fairly common occurrence for version formats not being backward compatible, but most of the time the effects are unavoidable.
Your new exported file is now ready to use.