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Participating Frequently
August 21, 2019
Question

Cursor turns into a small circle with four pointers in Illustrator

For the past week my arrow pointers at times, when over tool bar or the File, Edit etc. bar turn into a small circle with four pointers, a bit like a target. Any ideas why?

 

{Renamed by MOD}

8 replies

Inspiring
June 18, 2025

Did anyone find a solution to this? It's started happening to me. I select eyedropper and I get the little target symbol instead of the pipette symbol. But not everytime. Sometimes it's the pipette and sometimes it's not.

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Community Expert
June 18, 2025

Is your caps lock key on?

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Inspiring
June 19, 2025

No.  At least, not that I am aware. I'll watch for that. I did disable the capslock on my keyboard, because I hit it by accident all the time. IT repaired it, however, thinking it was just broken.
So maybe I'm hitting it without realising, thanks for the headsup.

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sharp_hands16B8
Community Expert
Community Expert
September 13, 2019

It sounds like an eyedropper sampler target. Is it only showing up when you are over the toolbar and over the file menu?

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Srishti_Bali
Legend
September 12, 2019

Hi George,

 

Sorry to hear about this. I would request if you can share a few screenshots, along with the details asked by Monika and Bill.

 

Regards,

Srishti

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Monika Gause
Community Expert
Community Expert
September 12, 2019

Is Caps Lock on?

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Bill Silbert
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 21, 2019

What version of Illustrator and what operating system are you using? Have you recently updated your operating system?

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