August 07, 2004

Mac FLA to PC?

I am curious if anyone has found a workaround to opening a Mac FLA on a PC. In the past I have used MacOpener (www.macopener.com) to access Mac media, but it only works with cross platform files formats and FLA is not on the list.

This hasn’t been much of an issue, but recently our company started an internship program for web students at the local university. Being the main Flash guy, they ask me questions and have me look at files to help them figure things out. The problem is that they ALL work on Macs and I am on Win XP. While I can go and work on their systems, I occasionally work from home, where I do not have access to a Mac.

Any tips are greatly appreciated.

Posted by Kris at August 7, 2004 02:55 PM
　



Comments

Just add '.fla' to the file name and it'll open right up.

Posted by: alex at August 7, 2004 04:20 PM

hmm, not sure what ou mean by this, .fla files open perfectly on both PC and Mac, doesn't matter where they were made. As Alex said it may be as simple as needing to add the extension so windows knows what to do with it, but you should teach your interns to do this as a matter of course as they are bound to have to work in mixed OS environments later.

Posted by: Adam Robertson at August 7, 2004 06:50 PM

no such thing as a mac/pc format fla. same thing. we share them daily across platforms.

Posted by: Keith at August 7, 2004 08:36 PM

That is what I always thought, however recently when I receive Mac fla files as email attachements, Flash is saying they are an Unexpected file format, although it recognizes them when setting it to only look for fla files and has the .fla extension. I am running Flash MX 2004 Pro and the interns are sending Flash MX files, so versioning should not be causing the problem

In the past I worked directly with a Mac designer and we often shared fla files with no problems, although the file would have to be saved local and not opened from the file server. The files I am having problems with are being emailed as attachements. Could something be happening to them on the server perhaps? All of our servers are Win based.

Posted by: Kris at August 7, 2004 10:54 PM

I mailed the file to a friend and he could open it, so on a whim I mailed it to myself as well. After that I could open it up with no errors. I guess it is something going on with my offices server config or web based email client.... weird.

Posted by: Kris at August 7, 2004 11:19 PM

Yeah there really should be no reason for you can't open a mac fla on a pc. It may be the attachment encoding used in the email. If they are on OS X, try this: when they send you an fla, tell them to open up the new email first, then click on the "attach" button. When the window pops up for them to search for a file, there will be a checkbox on the bottom that says "Send Windows friendly attachments" (don't drag and drop the file onto the mail icon to open the new mail message, apaprently clicking on the "attach" button is the only way to get to that checkbox).

I have to say, I never use this and it's always worked for me, but this is the only thing I could think of.

Posted by: flashape at August 8, 2004 04:36 AM

you could always have the students zip or stuff the file before e-mailing it...

Posted by: ethan at August 8, 2004 06:31 AM

I'm having the same problem only I've not sent mine over a network. I made a flash file on a mac and burnt it to CD. I put it on my winXP system and NO GO. can't opeen a mac fla on a pc. macromedia get your head out of your ass.

Posted by: Noah at August 24, 2004 11:35 AM

I'm having the same problem as Kris and Noah. what the hell is macromedia doing?? But anyway... what should i do? i'm totally fucked if i can't get these files home. thanks a bunch if you can help

Posted by: Brian at September 8, 2004 07:37 AM