Install and open an After Effects template without breaking it

Unzip to a real folder first

After Effects reads linked files from disk. If you double-click a composition inside a zip viewer, the project opens from a temporary folder and every link breaks the moment the viewer closes. Extract the whole archive to a folder you control — a project folder on your working drive, not the desktop and never a cloud-sync folder that uploads mid-render.

1. 1Right-click the downloaded zip and choose Extract All (Windows) or double-click it (macOS).
2. 2Extract into a folder named after the project, with no spaces or unusual characters in the path.
3. 3Keep the folder structure exactly as delivered — Footage, Audio, Fonts if present, and the .aep file.

Never rename or move the Footage folder on its own. If you must move the project, move the entire parent folder and relink once.

Install the fonts before opening

This is the single most common cause of “the template looks wrong”. If a font is missing, After Effects quietly substitutes something else and every text layer reflows — line breaks shift, centred text drifts, titles overflow their safe areas. Install the fonts listed on the item page, then start After Effects so it picks up the new fonts at launch.

1. 1Open the item page and note the fonts under Requirements.
2. 2Install each one at the system level (right-click → Install, or Font Book on macOS).
3. 3Quit and reopen After Effects. Relaunching is what refreshes the font list.
4. 4Open the project and confirm no missing-fonts dialog appears.

Check your After Effects version

Project files are not backward compatible. A 2024 project will not open in After Effects 2022, and there is no conversion tool that fixes it. The item page states the minimum version; if yours is older, update before buying rather than after.

Open, then immediately save as

The first thing to do after opening a template is File → Save As into your own project folder with your own name. That way the pristine original stays available if an experiment goes sideways, and you can rebuild a scene by importing the untouched file.

1. 1Open the .aep from the extracted folder.
2. 2Dismiss any “missing plugins” warning after reading which plugin is affected.
3. 3Save As into your own project folder, then continue working in the copy.