Illustrator: Basic Shortcuts Randomly Stop Working

Forum|Forum|2 months ago
February 23, 2026
3 replies
102 views

There is a fundamental issue in Adobe Illustrator that needs attention.

The keyboard shortcuts for Arrange

Bring Forward
Send Backward
Bring to Front
Send to Back

simply stop working.

They are correctly assigned in the Keyboard Shortcuts panel.

They worked before.

They are still mapped correctly.

But they do nothing.

Meanwhile, right-click → Arrange works perfectly.

So Illustrator can execute the command — it just ignores the keyboard input.

FelicityCM

Participant

I have this issue too, restarting Illustrator fixes it but it’s pretty annoying as it sometimes randomly happens again. I don’t particularly love having to close what I’m working on, restart illustrator, just so that I can use my arrange keyboard shortcuts.

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @FelicityCM

I’m sorry to hear you’re having similar trouble with Illustrator. Would you mind trying to run Illustrator under Safe Mode (Windows / macOS) and checking if the problem persists?

Looking forward to hearing from you.
Anubhav

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @schweinerei

That does seem troubling. In addition to what Ton suggested, would you mind running Illustrator after rebooting your computer in Safe Mode (Windows / macOS) and checking if it helps?

Looking forward to hearing from you.
Anubhav