AutoCAD Tip: Repair old AutoCAD drawings with the AutoCAD Mobile App

by Dennis Collin

When opening very old drawings, perhaps as old as pre-release 12 (DOS) files, the following error message may be displayed.

After acknowledging the message AutoCAD will then terminate. A similar error can also result when trying to access the drawing via Trueview viewer or similar. The message also results when trying to recover the file, not allowing to save a recovery version.

To salvage the drawing, I have found that the file can be opened and saved in the AutoCAD Mobile App. Save a copy of the drawing with a ‘Fixed’ suffix and download to a local workstation or network drive.

Open the drawing with the AutoCAD Desktop application, the open function states the file still needs recovery and will offer to fix the problem.

Recover the drawing once again, fix any problems found, the recovered drawing should now be clean of errors and be able to be worked upon normally.