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Inspiring
Feb 10, 2025 9:40 PM UTC
Question

Direct select tool can't edit textboxes anymore

There is a bug that is preventing text boxes from being resizable with the direct selection tool. Mac OS 14.5, Illustrator Version 29.0.1 (I can't check if it's up to date bc Creative Cloud won't load the Apps tab lol).

 

To replicate: paste text into a textbox so that it is overset. Deselect all objects. Use the Direct Select tool to try and select two anchor points on the same side by clicking and dragging. Result: the entire text box is selected, instead of simply the 2 anchor points you tried to select.

 

You can even deselect the other 2 anchor points, and try to edit the text box, but the entire thing will be selected regardless of the visual indicator of selection.

 

I am honestly running into more and more bugs in Illlustrator over the years, and they never seem to be getting fixed. Can we expect this software to be supported in the future?

4 replies

Kurt Gold
Community Expert
Community Expert
Feb 10, 2025 11:10 PM UTC

It should still be possible to resize the textbox with the Direct Selection tool when two anchor points are selected.

 

What happens if you direct select one anchor point, Shift select a second one and then drag to any direction? Or just select the segment between the anchor points and then drag?

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Inspiring
Feb 11, 2025 2:59 PM UTC

The steps you described do work, however it's an unacceptable workaround as I am working with multiple grouped objects and need to extend the dimensions of all of the objects at the same time to preserve spacing. So it's a lot of extra steps for something that was working as expected a short time ago.

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Monika Gause
Community Expert
Community Expert
Feb 10, 2025 9:46 PM UTC

They've never been resizable with the direct selection tool.

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Inspiring
Feb 11, 2025 2:57 PM UTC

They certainly have. I've been using Illustrator since 2003 and it functioned as expected until this week.

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