Participant

Question

Problems when saving files in Illustrator on macOS

Forum|Forum|9 months ago
August 5, 2025
11 replies
1481 views

Hi

I keep getting this pop up message when I try to save a file after I recently saved another file.

Does anyone know what this means/how to resolve the issue?

Thanks!

How-to

PEDRO28575177ytud

Participant

Subject: Illustrator 30.3 crashes when saving as PDF

Hello,

I am experiencing a critical bug in Adobe Illustrator 30.3 on macOS (Apple M1 Pro) where the application becomes unresponsive and crashes every time I attempt to save a file as PDF.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Open an .ai file containing text and a linked PNG image
2. Go to File > Save a Copy > Adobe PDF
3. Select PDF options (Acrobat 6 / PDF 1.5, High Quality Print)
4. Click Save PDF
5. Illustrator becomes "not responding" and requires Force Quit

The file is approximately 100MB. I have already tried:
- Recreating the file from scratch in a new document
- Relinking the image instead of embedding it
- Lowering History States and disabling Real-Time Drawing
- Different PDF compatibility settings (Acrobat 5 and 6)

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @PEDRO28575177ytud

I’m sorry to hear you’re having similar issues with Illustrator on your computer. Would you mind checking for any pending macOS updates and updating to the latest Illustrator 30.4 release to check if it helps?

Also, kindly enable Full Disk Access for Illustrator (https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/video/allow-permissions-video.html) and share your observations.

If the problem persists, kindly check if Illustrator behaves this way when saving to a particular folder location (internal/external/network drive or a cloud-synced folder like iCloud Drive/Dropbox/etc.) and let us know how it goes.

Looking forward to hearing from you.
Anubhav

DC_Elemental

Participant

Ok will investigate.

DC_Elemental

Participant

It keeps lagging on saving sometimes not responsive and not letting me quit illustrator.
Did not use to happen about a month ago.

Illustrator 30.3
Macbook Pro M1 Max
Sonoma 14.8.5 (23J423)

Admittedly we run our server on Dropbox, but even still it was not a problem about 1 month ago.

Please don’t ask me to to save files locally as that is not a viable solution.

Saving on dropbox was working fine without issue a few months ago, now all of sudden it is lagging for 10 mins a file that used to take 1min to save

We have 100’s of files on dropbox and need to share files between team members so not viable to save locally.

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @DC_Elemental

I’m sorry to hear about your experience. Could you check if the file permissions for the Dropbox folder are set up correctly? It may sometimes help to reinstall Dropbox to reset permissions. Also, try re-enabling Full Disk Access for Illustrator if it hasn't already been enabled, and share your observations.

Looking forward to hearing from you.
Anubhav

DC_Elemental

Participant

Same issue, really hard to get things done.

M

mark_2138

Participant

I'm also having the same issue at work with the latest version of Illustrator. Hopefully it gets resolved soon - making it difficult to get things done.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

@mark_2138 schrieb:

I'm also having the same issue at work with the latest version of Illustrator. Hopefully it gets resolved soon - making it difficult to get things done.

Did you already try turning off "Save in background" in the Illustrator preferences?

M

mark_2138

Participant

I did and it seems to help, but the saving process is a lot slower than it used to be.

K

Kateryna_Shcheglova7394

Participating Frequently

I don't know what happened, but this is the first update in Illustrator after which everything works worse. Saving takes a long time, small interferences constantly appear, either you can't move the points with the stylus, or some tool freezes. After rewriting everything works again. But this really VERY much interferes with work

F

FrizzleFry

Inspiring

Same thing running 29.7.1; I update 15 days, strange just started happening this week. (August 18th). If I reboot its seems to be good for awhile.

A

AreliMedia

Known Participant

Same, it just started today for me. All of my apps are on auto update, and they are all on the most current versions. Illustrator crashed 6-7 times yesterday when I tried to use key commands, and today won't save files, just 'saves' endlessly or errors out. I've had to restart/force quit Illustrator at least 5 times so far today. I can't get work done because of this Adobe, this is insane.

mizzwinkens

Participant

Same happening to me. I have version 29.7.1. Can't save, save as or save copy. I have just now switched off auto save and save to cloud but my current open file still won't save. HELP!

H

her_6567

Participant

i have this issue as well, Adobe what are you doing to your software

Bill Silbert

Community Expert

It sounds to me like Illustrator's background saving feature may be causing the problem. This feature allows you to get back to work on a file while the document continues getting saved. This is especially helpful with large files that take a long time to save as without this feature you would not be able to resume working on a file until the save was finished. If you tried saving a second document while still background saving the first then I could see getting the popup that you did. If you would prefer not to use background saving then you can turn it off in the File Handling section of your Illustrator preferences (settings).

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