Illustrator CS5 + Mac El Capitan = Crashing!

When you have obscure bugs, it's not worth fixing old versions - granted

But when you installed base of millions of users systematically crash and lose work every time they use your product, then you are creating very bad will and it's worth fixing.

Six months on and we have no evidence that Adobe is interested: no fix, no communication on a fix.

I've voted with my feet and have purchased Affinity: cheap, absurdly fast, CS compatible, no subscription. Ever. Free upgrades.

I'm having the problem with a brand new iMac, so my software Adobe CS4 Master Collection was installed after the operating system with just Microsoft Office added before. 

There are problems with the Acrobat Pro 9, but the worst is with Illustrator.  It crashes 95% of the time when I try to save my work or export the art work to a .jpg.  The only message given is whether I want to ignore-- this is hard to ignore-- send a message to Apple, which I'm frustrated enough to usually do, or restart.  But the work is lost.

So I updated to El Capitan. _Every_ application i have works. Even Word app from many moons ago.

ONLY Indesign and Illustrator on Quit issues this error:

Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)

Photoshop quits elegantly as normal.

It is obvious it is not the OS that is the Problem 

Well, I can confirm... this HAS NOT been fixed in the 10.11.2 update.

Thankfully, I can still save to the default location... BUT, a few times now, I get busy working and forget that I can't pick my save location like you can with, well, virtually EVERY PROGRAM ON EVERY OPERATING SYSTEM EVER MADE, and I click the drop down menu to change the save location.... then I remember... and I know that as soon as I release the mouse, the app will crash and I will lose everything done since the last save. So I try to save after EVERYTHING I do, no matter how small, and save to the default location, then move it to another location... but this is a WORKAROUND, not a SOLUTION.

I know this is on Apple, not Adobe, but COME ON GUYS... some people here, including me, don't use Adobe applications ONLY to make better selfies and "Photoshop" hats onto cats... we use it to pay our bills, buy our food and provide for our families... and it worked until El Capitan. Adobe will NEVER release a fix for CS5, so it MUST be Apple; and after paying over 3 grand for the machine you are SO proud of, this is unacceptable.

The only thing that works fine is to buy Adobe CC.

Like you I work everyday with Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign -no more but I have to buy the full suite as you know- and I can't stop my job because my pencil is broken.
Are you waiting for a fix? Nor Adobe or Apple fix this, 2 month and nothing happen. They did this on purpose, and even if they didn't it on purpose, now they wait like a hunter wait for prey.

InDesign CS5.5 was crashing on startup under El Capitain, until I turned off auto-hiding the menu bar and dock, and now it works fine!

Unlikely, but true... maybe this could be affecting Illustrator for you?

‌ although this may not help out everyone, I have it up and running on my El Capitan iMac. When saving, if I leave it set to the default save location, in my case "Documents", it saves without a crash. The second I try to change the same location using the drop-down menu, it crashes.

As I have stated on other forum posts, I absolutely need CS5 to perform my job. I work as a designer for screenprint, and I am always supplied with client made ink drawings that must be vectorized for print. Although the new image trace feature works great if you want to turn a photo into a 500,000 path full-color vector, it simply does not trace with the same kind of precision on black and white line art that the old version did.

this is a near daily task for me. I have sent emails and posted in the forums begging adobe to allow me to buy a new license for CS 5.1 illustrator. And every time, I get the exact same response… Silence.  And although I do not typically condone such things, Adobe, there are other ways to get your software, and if you will not allow me to give you money for it… I know that was a little off topic, but maybe somebody will finally listen.

anyway, hopefully this will help out a couple people having the crash on save issue, and hopefully Apple will provide a fix to this issue, because I send a report every single time it crashes on me.

on a sidenote, I am using talk to text on my phone for this, so hopefully it doesn't butcher my words and grammar too badly

Sometimes the choice whether to upgrade our OS is, for all intents and purposes, made for us when we buy a new computer. I just got a new iMac and Illustrator CS5 is crashing on me when I try to save. I haven't exhausted all the options as far as troubleshooting goes, but I'm hoping I can get it to run because I don't want to go with CC yet either. I bought CS5 not long before CC was introduced and am not ready to pay again so soon.

In an ideal world, we'd all upgrade as soon as a new OS or software has worked out the bugs and things would progress smoothly. But many of us are just cobbling things together as best we can because we don't have that kind of money.

Just my thoughts.

A bit of a workaround for those that can't be bothered with the OSX reinstall.

Lil bit annoying but better than nothing,  you just have to change the way you use the eyedropper...

1. Use the Direct Selection (White) Arrow to select the object you are taking the colour from

2. Eyedrop the colour from the object,

3. Hold down the option key and the eyedropper will switch to disperse function

4. Disperse the colour to the desired object

Doesn't crash for me using that way anyway...

Bit of a hack‌... But if you highlight an object in the chosen colour you want and make into a swatch... Then change objects and apply from the swatch... Not ideal but it doesn't crash...