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Participating Frequently
September 24, 2025
Answered

Illustrator Not Showing Art or Artboards

  • September 24, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 395 views

I've been having this issue for months currently which has not been resolved by three calls to customer service. I've uninstalled/reinstalled, cleared the app data, and cleared the temp folder. The agents have done remote sessions to try and address the issue.

 

 

Basically, whenever I startup Illustrator for the first time, whatever the first file is that I open will show the art/artboards for a split second and then everything disappears. There is only grey. I have to close and reopen the file to get it to appear properly. This has led to compounding issues which include my font library only updating when I restart the program and my transparency masks getting distorted when I use the align tool.

 

When I clear the app data and restart the program, I do not encounter the disappearing artboards. However, they will return upon starting the program up for a second time and beyond. I can only assume that some file is getting corrupted in app data, but I don't know why this would be happening continously or how to get it to stop. Any help would be greatly appreciated, this has been an absolute time-suck trying to work around the issues and trying to solve them.

Correct answer Anubhav M

I am still having the same issue after having made another account.


Hello @simplybright,

Thanks for confirming. Could you try disabling GPU Performance in Illustrator's preferences to see if it works? If it does, chances are there is a problem with the GPU driver. In that case, try performing a clean reinstallation of the GPU(s) drivers (Intel / NVIDIA / AMD) and setting the Graphics Preference to High-Performance for Illustrator (https://adobe.ly/42d42Lt) and let us know if it helps.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

1 reply

Anubhav M
Community Manager
Community Manager
September 24, 2025

Hello @simplybright,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience with Illustrator. Would you mind trying the following steps and checking if they help:

 

- Close all Adobe applications.

- Rename the UXP folder to UXP.old from the following location:

(Windows) Navigate to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\UXP

 

- Relaunch Illustrator

 

If the problem persists, kindly try running Illustrator under a different administrator account (Windows) and sharing your observations.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

Participating Frequently
September 24, 2025

So, it seems to be fixed when I run the program as an administrator, but I'm not able to open any of my illustrator files by double clicking them or dragging/dropping. I have to go to file > open to open a file.

Anubhav M
Community Manager
Community Manager
September 24, 2025

Thanks for confirming, @simplybright

Could you also try running Illustrator under a different administrator account (Windows) and check if it helps?

Anubhav