Problem

When trying to restore a SSAS database cube from a backup file, the following error appears:

The following system error occurred:  The file exists. (Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services)

Solution

I encountered this error in two different situations. In the first one, I was trying to restore a backup of an SSAS 2008 cube on an SSAS 2005 server.

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In the second situation, I was copying the backup file over the network to the destination server, using FTP. It seems that there was an error in the copy process, and the backup file was corrupted. As a result, the restore operation failed with this error (The following system error occurred:  The file exists.). After copying again the backup file over the network, the restore operation completed successfully.