Bonjour,
En attendant que Adobe permette l'ouverture parfaite des fichiers FreeHand, j'ai trouvé ceci, qui permet de convertir déjà en PDF mes .FH7 ou plus :

https://www.coolutils.com/online/FH11-to-PDF

JM

There are several external solutions for importing old Freehand projects into Illustrator.
One of them is discussed in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dH7k00nO2Y

Ich brauche diese Importmöglichkeit auch! In einer alten Illustrator-Version (Version CS4?) war ja bereits so ein Plugin dabei. Aber den alten Illustrator habe ich lange nicht mehr! Warum wurde das Plugin nicht auch für neuere Illustrator-Versionen einfach als Standardplugin beibehalten? Es wäre doch so einfach gewesen. Bitte gebt uns doch die Möglichkeit, alte Freehand Dateien zu öffnen. Ich habe hunderte davon und benötige sie!

I need this import option too! An old version of Illustrator (version CS4?) already had such a plug-in. But I don't have the old Illustrator since a long time! Why wasn't the plugin simply kept as a standard plug-in for newer Illustrator versions? It would have been so easy. Please give us the possibility to open old Freehand files. I have hundreds of them and need them!

Please this would be super helpful to extract an entire campaign done in Freehand 10.

I am one of those fine artists too, that used freehand in the 90s - I have important work from that period, that I cannot access - please integrate a conversion feature!

We have an entire product that we can no longer update. Creative Cloud is an expensive way not to be able to do one's work. Earlier versions of AI would convert Freehand. Surely you can preserve that ability, even if only in stages.

I downloaded free trial of Affinity Designer - but it didn't open fh9 files on my Mac.

Please Adobe, provide some way to convert Freehand files to Illustrator. You have completely abandoned a generation of designers and artists whose work is now inaccessible since you purchased Macromedia. You know those files will likely be revised in Illustrator...it can only fuel your subscriptions.

I pay for use Adobe Suite and I waiting for the day when Illustrator will open old Freehand files. I have a big archive of fh9, fh11 files and i don't want to pay for a third part plugin to open it.

Most of us have Freehand files we cannot access and the need is a great one as I'm quite sure you know. Ai should be able to open all versions of the files.

I bought Affinity Designer which easily opens Freehand files. Affinity also works very similarly to Freehand (ie, paste inside etc). Overall it probably took under a day to adjust to Affinity Designer.

Prior to this I was still using Freehand on Windows 10 but it recently broke and I refuse to use Illustrator (bonkers UI and workflow make zero sense to me).

Also, Affinity Designer is $70. No subscription, mac and windows.

Now that I have no job due to Covid I'm working on my Portfolio and was hoping to use some existing FH8 file drawings I needed. Unable to open with CC2020. How can I access these files even as an image or pdf would be helpful.
Thanks

Please Adobe, provide some way to convert Freehand files to Illustrator. You have completely abandoned a generation of designers and artists whose work is now inaccessible since you purchased Macromedia. At least provide a one-time conversion for freehand files, since you know those files will likely be revised in Illustrator...it can only fuel your subscriptions.

I had a similar situation where I was looking to open circa 93 files. My solution was to fire up my vintage PowerMac G4 lucky for me, it had freehand 11, and running an outdated OSX. I was able to open and resave the files to the illustrator. I was able to open most of my files, not all of them converted, some needed a tweak.

Would love to have the ability to do this. As a long-time graphic designer I have lots of files old Freehand files (circa 1997) which are now completely inaccessible. It's my early work, and I still have digital copies, but no way to access them. TIF, EPS, QXD and PDF file formats from the era are still readable...

Eugienio, I don’t have an old version of Illustrator, only the newer CC version on my computer

You can export Freehand MX file in Adobe illustrator 7x.
It's one of the options available in the export menu.
The file will be exported directly with .ai extension

I too would love to be able to open my old Freehand files. I'm a fine artist who works digitally. My source files (in Freehand) are no longer accessible. :(

For me, it's more about accessing old files that have been archived that were in Freehand. Sure, I never use Freehand anymore, but every once in a while it would be nice to import and old file so I don't have to start from scratch. It honestly can't be all that hard for Adobe to add this support into Illustrator.

I originally used Tensai AI Plugins to convert my files. It's a hit and miss situation. Some of the .fh9 files were too old or complex to convert. My best solution was found in my old macs lying in my garage, luckily It hadn't been updated since 0S9. I reopen the files using freehand, resave them into .pdf or .ill sometimes to .eps and then reopened the in illustrator 6, then again in CC. Not all converted accurately and many times better than the extension in Illustrator.