Working remotely with clients and coworkers. The issue is that mac sometimes leaves off filename extensions like .psd which pc needs to recognize files. Changing the filename to include filename extension allows the file to be used on pc, but then it's breaks the file connections on the mac because the filename was changed.
On top of this: When trying to reconnect the file, I got the error: cannot import file first entry in folder is another folder.
I had to click through this error over a dozen times before it brings up the menu to select the layer in the photoshop file I needed to reload.
AE is normally supposed to automatically replace and reload the other layers from the photoshop file once one layer is fixed, but in this case it did not.
So at this point I was faced with having to manually reimport each layer of the PSD, clicking through a dozen error messages each time, or importing from scratch and having to redo all the After Effects animation. I'm not sure if this is a result of the issues coming from macs sometimes dropping filename extensions and having to add the extension name on pc, or if there is a second and separate error happening that thwarts the file relinking. It wouldn't be a big deal if it recognized the rest of the file once I fixed one layer. It only seems to happen with these After Effects project files going from mac to pc.