Saving Ai File To High Quality PDF Leaves Red Box Surrounding Artwork

I have been having this same problem, and I am so glad to have that stupid red line (and green line) gone! Thank you, Barbara, for that solution!

This part is directed at Adobe: I don’t understand why it’s there in the first place. My document did not have any trim or bleeds set. Not in the Illustrator document, not in the export PDF settings. And even if it did, the trim wouldn’t be located where the red box is showing up. I don’t feel like just turning the “Show art, trim, & bleed boxes” setting off is a lasting solution for me because there will be just as many times when I do need to view trims and bleeds and I’m not interested in constantly turning that setting on and off.

See the two attachments. One shows my Illustrator file with everything unlocked and everything selected. You can see nothing runs to the right edge of the page. The second image shows my file saved as PDF and opened in Acrobat. The red box is aligned on my left margin but goes all the way to the right page edge (what in the world?). And it’s not just this document… everything I save has this stupid misaligned red box. And so far, it’s always aligned on the left and bottom margin and runs to the right page edge and almost to the top page edge. Also note the green box, which isn’t quite as annoying, but I don’t want it there either. I keep thinking this problem must be a setting in Illustrator… alignment or guides or something… but I haven’t found it yet. I’m getting tired of being one of the many users solving all of Adobe’s growing number of problems for them (or not solving!).