: Illustrator - Breaking up compacted layers New to Illustrator. When I open an ai CC file in CS6, all layers are compacted into one layer. How can I break it up into the original individual

@Reiling762

I have had this issue as well, when opening a CS6 file within CC.
The way to 'ungroup' the layers is to click the physical layer in the layer panel, and click on the small horizontal bar button for the dropdown in the top right of the panel. From there you can select 'Release to layers' in either a build or sequence option which will expand the layer into its separate elements again.
I'd search that separately if you want to know which to pick, I haven't quite figured out the difference yet... it seems one builds more into sublayers and one builds more from top down. Both unfortunately cause you to lose original layer names though.

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@Samaraweera207

I've run into this a lot, since I'm still using CS4. Just like Jascha said, each version of Illustrator will not be perfectly compatible with other versions, and if possible, just save the file again in the legacy format.

However, I have noticed when I open files from the newer versions, the elements are all grouped in weird ways, and sometimes it seems like the layers are all "compacted," but they're really just under a lot of clipping masks. You can go to the layers panel (Windows -> Layers) and open up each layer to see if this is the case. If you drill down into each layer and each group in the layer (by clicking on the dropdown arrows) and find a clipping mask as the last element in the group/layer, you can delete those clipping masks and start recovering your graphics.

This is very tedious, so only try it if you can't get the version re-saved, or if there aren't very many layers/groups. Definitely the last resort.

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@Sent7350415

Files saved in Illustrator CC are not 100% compatible with earlier versions like CS6. Losing layers is the most common problem, so I'm pretty sure this is what caused yours.

If you want to back save an Illustrator CC file to CS6 without losing layers, you can follow these simple steps:


Select 'Save As' (choose type Adobe Illustrator (*.AI)
Open the second dialog box 'Illustrator Options'.
The Illustrator Options dialog lets you choose the Illustrator Version in the dropdown box at the top.
It is in this box where you want to choose Illustrator CS6 as the version to save.

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