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no customer support?
Participant
July 9, 2026
Question

Illustrator Intermittently Stops Allowing Objects to Be Moved by Dragging (Windows)

  • July 9, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 27 views

Illustrator intermittently stops allowing objects to be moved by dragging with either the mouse or a Wacom pen.

The objects can still be selected, scaled, rotated and moved using the keyboard arrow keys. Only click-and-drag movement stops working.

When attempting to drag an object, Windows plays the standard notification sound (the short "ding" indicating an action could not be completed).

Restarting Illustrator does not resolve the issue. Restarting Windows restores the functionality until the issue occurs again.

The problem occurs approximately once per day.

The issue affects Illustrator 2025 and 2026 on the same computer. Photoshop and other applications continue to work normally. Also reinstalled Wacom Drivers, without success.

The issue first appeared approximately three months ago. Before that, I had used Illustrator for years on the same computer without ever experiencing this problem.

    1 reply

    Abhishek Rao
    Community Manager
    Abhishek RaoCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    July 9, 2026

    Hi ​@no customer support?,

     

    Thank you for the detailed description, and sorry for the experience. To help us narrow this down, could you please confirm whether the issue occurs in all documents (including a new blank file) and with both the Selection and Direct Selection tools? Please also let us know your Windows build, exact Illustrator version, and Wacom driver version. If possible, share a short screen recording capturing the issue along with the Windows "ding" sound.

    When the issue occurs, please try temporarily disabling GPU Performance (Edit > Preferences > Performance), resetting your workspace, and testing with only the mouse or only the Wacom device to see if the behavior changes. If the issue persists, please reset Illustrator preferences (after backing up any custom settings) and let us know the results. As a final isolation step, please test the behavior in Windows Safe Mode to rule out any third-party software interference: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/start-your-pc-in-safe-mode-in-windows-92c27cff-db89-8644-1ce4-b3e5e56fe234

    Looking forward to hearing back the observations.

    Abhishek

     

    P
    Phil
    Participant
    July 9, 2026

    Same issue occurring on MacOS v26.5.1. Illustrator v30.6. The issue seems to be with line segments, specifically perfectly horizontal and perfectly vertical segments. The indicator seems to see the segment (with difficulty) but fails to perform any actions such as duplicating, moving, setting a key object. Happens on both GPU/CPU performance and persists after restarting Illustrator. Does NOT occur in a new document right away, but does seem to occur randomly after some time, unclear what the trigger is.

    P
    Phil
    Participant
    July 9, 2026

    With further experimentation I was able to correct the behavior by changing zoom levels repeatedly. 50% zoom seems to re-trigger the issue more often than not, while 100% zoom seems to fix it, but not consistently. Had a hunch that the issue is resolution dependent and after reducing my monitor resolution, the issue is completely gone at all zoom levels. Obviously this isn’t a fix as I would like to work at my maximum resolution, but it’s a temporary solution until the bug is figured out.

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