Can't open file after Keynote crashed

Question

I was working on a large Keynote file (about 130 Mb), when Keynote (4.0.1) quite unexpectedly. It happened a few times before, and I thought it was because of the instability of the new Leopard system. This time, however, I could not open the file after the crash. An error message was displayed: "Can't open file" followed by the path and the file name.
Does this happen to anyone else? Can anyone help? I hate to lose the work and go back to an early version.

Answer 1

Keynote and Leopard, especially in their newest iterations, are remarkably stable. That said, no file, program, or OS is totally immune from corruption. Whenever a program, or worse, your Mac, even starts to behave strangely, your first step ought to be to attend to it with a good fixit utility. Repairing permissions is usually fruitless, since it's highly unlikely there's a permissions problem. You already own *Disk Utility*, so you should try to repair the disk with that. Unfortunately, DU's disk repair is pretty wimpy, often unable to repair a problem, or erroneously reporting no problem when one obviously exists.
So, if you own a Mac, you owe it to yourself to buy at least one (but better, two) industrial-strength utility. There are really only three to choose from:
1. DiskWarrior is an absolute must. It's unbeatable in rebuilding the directory, and the directory is usually what's corrupted. It can now fix files, too, which is also helpful.
2. *TechTool Pro* is an excellent suite of fixits - directory, files, defrag, and some hardware tests. It also has a wonder feature, the eDrive. This is a small (10GB) bootable partition on your boot drive which has, among other things, TTP on it. If your main boot partition has a problem, you can boot from here and usually fix things. AFAIC, it's an absolute must on a laptop which you take on trips, far from your collection of fixit disks. You can also put DW on this partition, so you have everything you need right at your fingertips.
3. *Drive Genius* is a relative new-comer, also a good suite of fixits, and, I believe, does backups, too.
I have 1 and 2, and that has saved me from catastrophe more than once. 1 and 3 would probably be good, too. (You ought to have more than one of these serious apps because one can sometimes fix something another can't - different proprietary algorithms.)
One last thing: if you have anything on your computer it'd break your heart to lose (and who doesn't), remember +The First Rule of Computing+: There are two kinds of computer users: those who have already lost all their data at least once, and those who have not yet lost all their data at least once. So: *backup, backup, backup*. I vote for bootable clones, done often (at least daily if you work daily), TimeMachine is pretty good, and there are other options. Pick one, and do it religiously.