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Answered

Organize layers in folders

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
July 9, 2010
5 replies
69440 views

I'm an interaction designer, and therefore my designs are composed of a multitude of controls, each one with different details. Right now, I'm working on a 141 layer document. It would come in handy to have several layers grouped by UI control, making it much quicker to find and edit what I want.

Correct answer Abhishek Rao

Hi everyone,

I understand how valuable this functionality would be, especially when working with large and complex documents, and I appreciate everyone who has continued to share feedback on it over the years.

If this is something you'd like to see in Illustrator, please consider upvoting the following UserVoice request and adding your comments there:

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/34589659-add-folders-in-layers-panel

Your votes and feedback help the product team better understand the demand for a feature and prioritize future improvements. You'll also be notified directly of any updates posted to the request.

Thanks again for sharing your feedback, and please let us know if there's anything else we can help with.

Best,
Abhishek

Abhishek Rao

Correct answer

Community Manager

Hi everyone,

I understand how valuable this functionality would be, especially when working with large and complex documents, and I appreciate everyone who has continued to share feedback on it over the years.

If this is something you'd like to see in Illustrator, please consider upvoting the following UserVoice request and adding your comments there:

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/34589659-add-folders-in-layers-panel

Your votes and feedback help the product team better understand the demand for a feature and prioritize future improvements. You'll also be notified directly of any updates posted to the request.

Thanks again for sharing your feedback, and please let us know if there's anything else we can help with.

Best,
Abhishek

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi everyone,

Thanks for continuing to share your feedback on this request. I checked for updates, and while there isn't any new information to share at the moment, the request remains under consideration.

Please continue to vote and add your feedback to the feature request, as it helps the team understand the demand and impact of this functionality.

Thanks again for your support and feedback.

Abhishek

TimothyOaks

Participant

Please add folders for layers!!! 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

TimothyOaks

Participant

Shocked to find that this original post is 15 years old 😱

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Tiago MoitaAuthor

Participating Frequently

Still finding related things that piss me off! Why does Illustrator expand all the layers when I open a document, even though I had collapsed them all before saving it?

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benji201

Participant

Actually, that specifically is really pissing me off... I am trying to create a series of relatively complex templates and I go through all the effort of collapsing the layers only to find that when I open the file again 60% of the layers are open. It seems that main layers open, then sublayers, then the next sublayers but not any layers further than that. Why on earth I have no idea and if it is going to open layers and sublayers then why not all of them?

chrisgieger

Participant

Has anyone found a solution to preventing the layer folders from opening everytime I open a document?

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Tiago MoitaAuthor

Participating Frequently

And maybe provide an option to substitute the "parent layer" thumbnail for a folder icon, to make it easier to identify the groups of layers created by the user?

Scott Falkner

Community Expert

You can drag any layer into another layer, making it a “child” of that “parent” layer. This is close to folders for layers, except that a layer can contain both objects and child layers. This means expanding that layer in the Layers panel to view the child layers means also seeing all that layer’s object in the layers panel.

Fortunately you can turn that feature off by changing the Panel Options via the Layers panel’s flyout menu.

Unfortunately that activates a bug that prevents you from dragging an object into a child layer.

Ah, Illustrator. Will you ever not suck?

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Tiago MoitaAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks, Scott!

That works like you say, but not perfectly. Probably that's why I thought this wasn't possible, because now I vaguley recall trying that last year or something.

What I don't like, when I say it doesn't work perfectly, is that when I lock all layers but the "parent layer", with ALT+click, Illustrator REALLY locks everything but the parent layer, meaning the child layers are also locked, which doesn't make any sense at all, because obviouslly, then everything is locked. This can be less of a nuisance for big groups of layers if used the control "unlock all", but you might be unlocking something else you don't want.

So after all, this topic ended being justified, I think :-)

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Tiago MoitaAuthor

Participating Frequently

Further proof that this thing is flawed is that if I have a layer with some sublayers (to start using the official terminology) hidden, and then I drag the layer and later toggle the sublayers visibility on, they're still in the first place. The natural thing to happen would be for them to move inside the layer, as naturally, I intended them to be part of that group, in my case, as I stated previoulsy, a UI control.

Oh, and by the way, I can't drag an object into a child layer, independently of that option you mentioned.

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