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Participant
October 1, 2025
Question

Option to Select Same greyed out - Illustrator 30.2.1 macOS 26.3

  • October 1, 2025
  • 4 replies
  • 400 views

Is there workaround? All options are grayed out.  Using Mac. 

4 replies

Participant
March 11, 2026

I’m experiencing the same issue. It breaks a workflow that I’ve used for years, and is dramatically impacting productivity on Illustrator-based projects for my team. It’s made what should be a thirty-second cleanup action into a frustrating half-hour mess.

Illustrator version 30.2.1
MacOS version 26.3

 

And yes, I’ve verified:
> There are other objects on the artboard that share the same attributes
> Those objects are not locked or on a locked layer
> I am not in isolation mode

 

The issue appears to be in the 2026 version of Illustrator. When I open the same file in Illustrator 2025 (29.8.5), the functionality is available as expected:
 

 

Anubhav M
Community Manager
Community Manager
March 14, 2026

Hello ​@jessi_6001 

 

I’m sorry to hear you’re having similar trouble with Illustrator. Would you mind sharing a sample file along with a brief screen recording of your exact workflow, so we can investigate further with the team?

 

Looking forward to hearing from you.
Anubhav

Bill Silbert
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 16, 2026

When you updated your Illustrator did you keep the preference files from the previous version? Often using older preferences that were aligned to earlier code can cause performance issues. Try resetting your Illustrator preferences. This will restore the program to its defaults. Hopefully it will fix the issues with the Selection menu.

 To reset Illustrator preferences:

For Macintosh Users: The User Library folder in which Illustrator’s preferences are stored is hidden by default on most Macintoshes. To access it make sure that Illustrator is closed and click on the desktop to launch a Finder Window (Command-N).With this window in column view follow the path User>Home folder (it’s the folder with an icon that looks like a house—it may have the user’s name rather than “Home”) and click on the Home folder. With the Option Key pressed choose Library from the Finder Go Menu. “Library” will now appear within the Home folder. Within the Library folder find the folder called Preferences and within it find the folder called “Adobe Illustrator <Version #> Settings” (earlier versions of Illustrator might just say “Adobe Illustrator”) and the file called “com.adobe.Illustrator.plist” and delete both that folder and that file. When Illustrator is next launched it will create new preference files and the program will be restored to its defaults.

For Windows Users: You can try the quick way of resetting on a PC which is to hold down Ctrl + Alt + Shift when launching Illustrator and respond affirmatively when asked if you want to reset. There have been some recent reports that the window asking if you want to reset is not popping up but that the prefs are being reset anyway. If this works great but if it doesn’t you may have to manually delete them.

To do so:

On Windows 7 and above the preference files are hidden. To find them go to the Control Panel and open Folder Options and then click the View tab. Then select “Show hidden files and folders” or “Show hidden files, folders or drive options” in Advanced Settings. Then delete (or rename) the folder at the end of this path: C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator [version number]\ Settings\<Language>. Make sure that Illustrator is closed when you do this. When you relaunch the program it will create  new preference files and the program will be at its default settings.

The advantage of manually deleting preference files is that after you’ve reset up the program (make sure that no document window is open) to your liking, you can create copies of your personalized “mint” preference files (make sure that you quit the program before copying them—that finalizes your customization) and use them in the future to replace any corrupt versions you may need to delete.

Abhishek Rao
Community Manager
Community Manager
October 10, 2025

Hi @Scissortail Meadows and @Todd33636751h6zi,

 

I understand how inconvenient it is. Please make sure you have at least one object selected before using this feature, as Illustrator needs a reference object to identify matching attributes like fill color or stroke weight. If the options still remain unavailable even after selecting an object, try resetting Illustrator preferences once and check if that helps. Ref: https://adobe.ly/47iUW2C
You can also test this behavior after restarting Illustrator in Safe Mode to rule out any third-party interference.

 

Let me know how it goes after testing, so I can review it further.

Abhishek

Participating Frequently
October 3, 2025

I am having the same issue on 29.8.2 and so is my coworker. When navigating to Select > Same, all of the menu items are grayed out and not clickable.

Abhishek Rao
Community Manager
Community Manager
October 1, 2025

Hi @Scissortail Meadows,

 

Thanks for reporting this. Could you please confirm if you are on version 29.8.2 as you mentioned it's the latest? Also, when you say 'I can’t select same', could you share a bit more context on what exactly you're trying to select, so I can understand the scenario better? I'd suggest testing once in Safe Mode to see if the issue is caused by any third-party apps running in the background: https://adobe.ly/4pVKgyo. Please give this a try and let me know how it goes.

 

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek