Illustrator 2020 keeps crashing and not responding when trying to do complex design work

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During the last years (or at least one decade) Illustrator has been promoted to get better and better when it comes to handle very complex files. More speed. More performance.

Perhaps no one knows an exact definition what a complex file actually is, but in my experience Illustrator is still a very slowcoach as soon as raster effects are being used numerously.

Depending on the amount of (raster) objects you have in your documents, Illustrator will be incredibly slow. No matter if you have tons of RAM or a 20.000 Dollar machine.

Hi there,

Sorry to hear about the trouble you are facing with Illustrator.  I would request that if you could share a few more details along with the ones asked by Monika:

• Exact version of  Windows/ MAC.
• Does it seem to crash at random or after a particular action?
• Is the issue related to a specific document? If yes, could you please share the document with us? You can upload it to the Creative Cloud (https://helpx.adobe.com/in/creative-cloud/help/share.html) and share the download link.
• When did this start happening? Are there any recent changes made to your system? For example, any antivirus, system updates or web extensions installed recently. 

You may also try resetting Illustrator preferences. Preference settings are saved each time you quit the application. Crashing and unexpected behavior in application can be caused due to corrupt/ damaged preferences. Please follow these steps and let us know how it goes: 

For MAC 

• Close all Adobe applications. 
• Go to locations 
• ~/Library/Caches 
• ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe 
• ~/Library/Preferences 
• Rename  Adobe Illustrator, com.adobe.illustrator and Adobe Illustrator 24 Settings folders to   Adobe Illustrator.old, com.adobe.illustrator.old and Adobe Illustrator 24 Settings.old 
• Launch Illustrator from the Creative Cloud. 

For Windows 

• Close all Adobe applications. 
• Go to Location C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Adobe 
• Rename  Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Illustrator 24 Settings folders to Adobe Illustrator.old and Adobe Illustrator 24 Settings.old 
• Launch Illustrator from the Creative Cloud. 

Please note that resetting preferences will remove all the custom settings and Illustrator will launch with default settings. This way all your old settings will be saved in .old folders and Illustrator will recreate new folders with default settings.  

Regards,

Srishti

Which system, which hardware?

How large is the document? How large is the object?

Which document raster effect resolution is set up?