So I was working on a semi-large project in Krita. I say semi-large because the canvas size was 3000 by 30000. I had saved two more files, even bigger than this, normally before.

So I was working on it normally, drawing, copy pasting photos, etc. I was constantly saving every minute or so, and it went smoothly, until I pressed save again and it turned up an error message: "Could not save to Desktop/[etc/etc file location]". I deleted several layers that were invisible.. Still didn't work. I turned it off and turned it back on, and it was saved to the previous save point.. **But wouldn't save any more. Trying to save turned up the same error.**

I moved the location of the file from the (crowded) desktop to a very spacious D Drive, which had a couple hundred GB of storage left. SAME PROBLEM.

**(Could not save D:/File location/Filename.kra~**

**Reason: Cannot open file for writing. Reason: The file could not be opened.")**

I restarted the PC, same problem.

I even copy pasted the layers from that project to a brand new project, which turned up the same error as well!! What's going on? How the heck can I fix this??? I'm on a very tight deadline, I gotta get this fixed right now..

Please help!

I don't even know what to do..

If Krita cannot write to a location, it's an OS filesystem permissions problem. Check the permissions for the .kra~ backup file; maybe it's not writable or not owned by your user.

boudewijn wrote:If Krita cannot write to a location, it's an OS filesystem permissions problem. Check the permissions for the .kra~ backup file; maybe it's not writable or not owned by your user.

I had saved properly for the past 2 hours or so, I see absolutely no reason why my permissions should suddenly stop working.
The same thing happened to another file I made; I saved it on the E drive this time, and it worked for a couple hours before turning up the same error.
Curiously enough, I erased a small line and saved again, and the error went away. What?

This is most likely a problem with the amount of RAM it's using, or how big the file is, something like that. I just can't figure it out.

boudewijn wrote:If Krita cannot write to a location, it's an OS filesystem permissions problem. Check the permissions for the .kra~ backup file; maybe it's not writable or not owned by your user.

I also tried changing permissions for the file. Same error.
I can OPEN the file and VIEW it, but I cannot SAVE or EXPORT it! SO here's another question:
IMPORTANT:
How can I export the file or save it as an image WITHOUT having to do it in Krita (since it doesn't allow for exporting or saving?)? I am totally willing to use the file as an image file, since I'm going to draw over it and don't need the very precise details.

I cannot begin to guess what might be up on your system...

But if you only need the rendered image, you can rename the .kra file to .zip, open it and take out the mergedimage.png, which is full size rendering of your image.

boudewijn wrote:I cannot begin to guess what might be up on your system...

But if you only need the rendered image, you can rename the .kra file to .zip, open it and take out the mergedimage.png, which is full size rendering of your image.

First of all, I can't figure out how to do that on Windows 10.. I change the name to [Project].zip, it still opens as a .KRA file. It's literally just renaming the file. (PLEASE answer this question as well; It will certainly come in handy later!)

Second, all the "corrupted" files started working when I moved them to my E: drive... I have absolutely no idea how or why. The C: and D: drives wouldn't work... Why??
I guess it's solved, but I need answers so I can prevent it from pulling this on me again!

I've got 7zip installed, and if I right-click on a renamed kra file, I can open it with 7zip. I wouldn't know why some drives wouldn't work and one other drive would, though...

Probably, you need to make sure that windows allows you to edit the file extension, it doesn't do that by default since... window vista? anymore. To an internet search for 'show file extension in windows' or something, it'll give way better tutorials on how to enable it than I could hope to make

Just a wild guess and nothing Krita-specific, but very often when I read about files suddenly not accessible/writeable anymore for obscure reasons, it turns out to be some anti-virus software going rampage because it thinks it saw something suspicious.

And seeing as krita files are actually zip files, most anti-virus software does sniff around in zip archives...

boudewijn wrote:I've got 7zip installed, and if I right-click on a renamed kra file, I can open it with 7zip. I wouldn't know why some drives wouldn't work and one other drive would, though...

Windows doesn't actually change the file format when you rename it, by default. It just adds it before the real format. You end up with "file.zip.kra" or something of that sort. You can change this by going into File Options and telling it to always show file formats (don't hide extensions for known file formats).

I had the same problem, which happened after I dragged a Krita file to the desktop. That must have somehow changed the default save location, causing this error. I fixed it by going in Krita to Settings > Reset Krita Configurations. That resets all the settings to default. If you are more familiar with the settings, you could probably find a way to just change that setting, but this worked for me, especially as I hadn't made many changes to the default settings.

Someone else had this problem https://krita-artists.org/t/could-not-save-reason-cannot-open-file-for-writing-reason-the-file-could-not-be-copied/13298 and was unable to fix it even after reinstalling Krita. This is because uninstalling the program did not delete the configuration file, which was storing the problematic setting.