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A
AIUserWO
Participant
July 14, 2020
Question

Direct Selection Tool Not Selecting Lines or Anchors

  • July 14, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 4470 views

Help! I must have recently upgraded and now my Direct Selection tool intermittently won't select lines of a shape. 

 

I.e. I drew a rectangle, trying to select only one side of the rectangle to delete it, and it only selects the entire rectangle to delete the whole thing as if I'm using the regular selection tool.

 

The only fix is to drag my cursor over the line to make the selection, however this is NOT a fix! Especially when I have multiple shapes next to each other and need to lock them all first in order to drag across them to make only the selection of the single line.

 

I don't know what's happening in this new version buy my cursor sensitivity seems off too - hard to click on anchor points and objects as well. I have Precise Cursors on and my selection tolerance is at 20 the max.

 

What's strange is that this is not happening all the time - only for certain shapes. I can't go on working like this! Please help!

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    2 replies

    Jeff Witchel, ACI
    Community Expert
    Jeff Witchel, ACICommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 15, 2020

    Did you try deleting Preferences? Reset Preferences. 

    A
    AIUserWOAuthor
    Participant
    July 23, 2020

    Hi Jeff,

     

    I have not because I am wary of what that will do to my personal settings. Every time Illustrator is updated I have to re-enter my 25+ keyboard commands manually and reconfigure all of my toolbars and settings. It's incredibly frustrating!

     

    If you have a fix for this too, I would greatly appreciate it!

     

    Thanks,

    Whitney

    Monika Gause
    Community Expert
    Monika GauseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 24, 2020

    The shortcuts are a separate file.

    You could try and replace it after resetting the preferences:

    https://www.vektorgarten.de/illustrator-settings.html

     

    For that to work you would need to keep a copy of your preferences folder (or at least the stuff you'd like to keep)

      Monika Gause
      Community Expert
      Monika GauseCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      July 15, 2020

      Does it get better when you turn on Smart Guides?

      A
      AIUserWOAuthor
      Participant
      July 15, 2020

      Hi Monika,

       

      No that does not help. There are times when I am directly hovering over an object even with my selection tool, clicking on it and it just won't select the object or line.

       

      This is beyond frustrating making it almost impossible to work and reducing my speed and productivity by probably 80%.

       

      Please let me know what can be done. I have tried using my tablet, external mouse and trackpad with varied settings and it's the same problem for all. This was not happening until the latest update.

       

      I am on a MacBook Pro 10.14.6. I do not want to upgrade to 10.15 because of the 32 bit app issues that are not fixed yet with other programs.

       

      Thanks!

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