The company I work for has a curriculum that was created in Illustrator. Now that Illustrator is being discontinued we need to export and convert this curriculum to a new program. It is a fairly large project as we have around 10,000 pages created. What would be the best program to convert this curriculum to? Obviously we would want the conversion as automated as possible with the least amount of work from our end. Any suggestions?
Adobe Illustrator isn’t being discontinued, or are you saying it’s being discontinued at your workplace?
A curriculum? What is the nature of this curriculum that involves around 10,000 pages? Are these individual pages created in Adobe Illustrator? If so, why in the world would you have used a drawing program, like Illustrator, for something like this? Without knowing more, I suspect that a page layout application, like InDesign, would have been far more efficient and appropriate.
As for converting those Illustrator documents into something else, how were they saved? Were they saved as basic Illustrator files, PDF-compatible Illustrator files, or something else? Depending on how they were saved, the files may be opened in Affinity, CorelDraw, or Canva. However, Illustrator documents are often complex in ways that other software applications may not support.
Are you simply looking to save them as files that can be opened? If so, save all of them as PDFs, which might be automatable with some scripting, but that depends on several factors you haven’t mentioned. If you want those files to be openable, usable, and editable documents in another program, the software I mentioned earlier might do the job. However, it might not be the best solution for your fundamental issue of converting the documents into a format best suited for the most appropriate software application to manage and create over 10,000 files moving forward.
If it were me, I’d search for a way to store all the information in a database that could populate a template or templates when needed. Then again, I’m not familiar with the nature of those documents or the reason you produced them as individual Illustrator documents.
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The best way is to keep the Illustrator format and there are many formats to export like PDF, SVG or EPS and find a program that is compatible with AI (Adobe Illustrator format not about AI Tool) and the other three formats I told you.
“Keep the Illustrator format” isn’t realistic if Illustrator is going away at their workplace.
If the company is discontinuing Illustrator internally, then relying on the .ai format is pointless nothing else fully supports it. Only Illustrator can guaranteed-open AI files with complete fidelity.
PDF is not an editable substitute for Illustrator
People often assume PDFs can be reopened in a vector program as if nothing changed. That’s just wrong. PDF is a final format meant for output, not editing. Illustrator has a backend option to Save with Compatible Illustrator file, which means the file can be opened in Illustrator - but it’s important to open in the same version as previous, I’ve seen strange occurances if not.
Things like:
appearance-only clipping masks
text engine differences
transparency flattening
spot colors
symbol instances
artboards
embedded ICC profiles
live effects
blends & mesh gradients
variable fonts
patterns
DO NOT round-trip cleanly into Affinity / Corel / Inkscape / or anything.
Even Illustrator itself only edits PDFs properly when the file contains the special “PDF + embedded AI data” hybrid structure. Other apps as far as I know ignore that AI portion entirely.
You lose editability, structure, naming, layer logic, and stylistic integrity.
EPS is obsolete
EPS is old PostScript tech from the 1980s.
No transparency
No layers
No color management, no live blending modes
No mesh gradients
No effects, no artboards
No proper Unicode text support
No ICC metadata
No modern features in general
Exporting 10,000 pages to EPS destroys modern content. And modern apps treat EPS as a legacy import format, not something to edit reliably.
Totally unsuitable for a curriculum with modern graphics.
SVG is RGB-only, web-oriented, and incomplete
SVG is fantastic for the web, but terrible as a universal print/layout round-trip format.
Limitations:
RGB only (no CMYK, no spot colours critical for print curricula)
Limited text features
Limited or no support for:
appearance stacks
patterns
compound strokes
artboards
blend modes
live effects
clipping/opacity masks (often flattened or misinterpreted)
And each program interprets SVG differently (Affinity, Figma, Illustrator, Inkscape, Corel all render SVG differently).
SVG breaks the moment you leave basic shapes and flat colours.
Exporting to PDF/SVG/EPS doesn’t magically make 10,000 Illustrator documents “editable in another program.”
They become output files, not working files.
No modern layout or vector application can open AI files (or PDF/SVG/EPS exports) with full fidelity, especially for something the size of an educational curriculum.
What actually is a reasonable approach
If its genuinely have 10,000 pages of curriculum content built in Illustrator:
Find out how each file was saved
If “PDF-compatible AI” was used best chance of recovery
If saved as pure .ai → much harder
Pick one host application (Affinity Designer, CorelDRAW, or even InDesign if restructuring)
Test a batch
Import 20–30 files and check:
fonts
layers
text flows
spot colours
linked images
bleeds
effects
Long-term
A curriculum of this scale really belongs in InDesign or a database-driven system, not Illustrator.
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H there, just one thing … don’t forget that Inkscape (a vector program) is be able to open and edit AI files (Adode Illustrator Image Format) too and let’s make AI image format GREAT AGAIN !
Might be able to open them - but see my lenghty reply why it’s not a good idea - for instance NO CMYK SUPPORT
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As read from somewhere that the support for CMYK is coming for Inkscape 1.5 (this is from a developer of Inkscape himself).
So? It was just 1 example
I just wanted to make one comment that’s all ! 
But this is serious stuff - they’ve got 10,000 files they need to transfer, and properly transfer them to something else.
It needs real care and attention to transfer that much over to another platform.
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It needs reality.
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Hi Smurf and the others, you make me aware of this issue and I hope that Flying Penut will find a solution soon but as this has to be with file formats, would be the best option ? ( i am just taking notes and see how you guys would say or resolve this kind of things) because to be sincere I was not aware of it … and how serious it is.
That’s OK.
As i said take 20 or so files at a time.
Usually i would do complete rebuild.
I’ve taken books up to 3,200 pages, the longest out of a set of 32 books, and completely rebuilt in indesign. That was about 15 to 20 years ago.
It took about 4 years for all 32.
Before that i also had a series of books needed editing and scanned them all and then basically masked our text and put in new text.
I’m totally against blanket conversions. Files can be opened etc, but you need to rebuild properly.
Pull it apart and put it back together.
When you open a file in a noncompliant app then you are introducing risk.
And each risk is costly.
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Look one of the worst things to do is say how great it is.
Never look at work at how good or easy it seems.
Always look for what’s wrong.
Pobody is nerfect.
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I don’t know enough about the problem to say what might be the optimum solution.
I have no idea why these 10,000 pages of curriculum information were built in Illustrator (but I know it was a bad decision). I don’t know why the poster thinks Illustrator is being discontinued. I don’t know whether all this information is a dozen documents or 10,000 separate pages. I don’t know how the information needs to be structured. I don’t know if there is one template involved or hundreds or if the information might need to be repurposed in various formats. I don’t know if the information is static and archived or dynamic and is periodically changed. I don’t know if it’s for higher, secondary, or elementary education. I don’t know how many people need to have access to the information. I don’t know what kind of security features are necessary. I don’t know if it needs to be networked over a LAN, the internet, or nowhere at all. I don’t know the budget they have to work with.
And I don’t know why the poster hasn’t clarified any of it.
There are several hundred software products specifically made for managing large amounts of data, all of which involve databases rather than storing the information directly into independent, formatted files (like Illustrator). For example, this forum resides in a database within a content management system. But it’s specifically designed to dynamically insert data into HTML templates structured around the specific needs of an internet forum.
There are DGA solutions, ECM solutions, headless ECM solutions, and various software applications built specifically for curriculum data; however, even these solutions depend on the nature of the datasets and what the company expects from them.
All this considered, the original question is good evidence that the original poster doesn’t know enough about the possible solutions to even ask the right questions, let alone make decisions.
What I’m reasonably certain about is that any company that originally decided to manage 10,000 pages of data using Adobe Illustrator, and is looking for a quick solution to transfer data out of Illustrator into something similar, is not a company that I would expect to find the best solution.
The only recommendation I can offer is for this company to find a specialist consultant to thoroughly identify and analyze the problem, so that an informed decision can be made that doesn’t lead to a naive alternative to Illustrator that comes back to bite them with a costly problem a few years down the road, like the decision to load all this information into static Adobe Illustrator files has done.
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What we do know is round-tripping them into different file formats and pretending they’ll behave the same as the original Illustrator files is just asking for a world of hurt. Illustrator files are not generic vectors they’re little ecosystems full of hidden behaviours, version quirks, embedded data, and Adobe-specific logic. The moment you push 10,000 of those through EPS or SVG or a PDF-only workflow, you’re permanently losing structure.
If the goal is “open and lightly edit,” you might get some of the way with Affinity or Corel. But if the goal is “maintain a curriculum for the next 5+ years,” then honestly:
Choose the destination app first.
Test a batch of real files and inspect every failure mode.
As @Just-B is saying - we don’t even know what is really going on as the OP hasn’t been back.
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I apologize. I was confused. The program we used that is being discontinued is Microsoft Publisher.
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Sorry. I was confused. We used Microsoft Publisher for our curriculum and that program is being discontinued so i am trying to replace that program.
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