Align to Key Object not working correctly Illustrator 28.2

[scottc65287965]

When selecting two objects and then the key object, Illustrator is shifting the top object off of the artboard and moves it repeatedly. Both centered vertically and horizontally. See recording.

[Kurt Gold]

Can you share this sample Illustrator file?

I've seen similar misbehaviour in some files in the past (in older Illustrator versions as well).

[scottc65287965]

Thanks Kurt. For some reason, the .ai file is getting flagged when I try to attach it. Trying a PDF this time.
It does seem isolated to this file. Perhaps something to do with how the logo is created.

[Kurt Gold]

There are some zombies inside of some nested groups. They are named "Clip-9".

Do a search in the Layers palette and delete the zombies. After that, aligning should work as expected.

[scottc65287965]

Amazing. Thanks for digging into this! Those dang zombies. Hope this helps others. 

[DesignFish]

why is this alignment issue a problem AGAIN. it's off-and-on an issue since 2000-ish. NOW we have options to change from key to board to center, etc. and it is constantly defaulting to "align to artboard" This is infuriating. How do I set it to perma-set to align to key. I've tried setting it in menu bar and in window. And with doc. open and without. Restarting in "align to key" does not "save as last used" selection. Sometimes it seems like if you have multiple  objects previously used "align to board" and others aligned to key, it auto aligns to board even when it clearly is clicked on to align to key. Other times you select all objects and it's on Align to key but doesn't actually work. 

AGH!! it's a new to 28.x problem in 2024!!

[Monika Gause]

When one object is selected, it defaults to align to artboard. This was changed due to user demand.

[DesignFish]

I do not Understand what you mean-- it happens all the time, no matter how many objects are selected one or 50 or anything in between. Why can you not have a default to align to key?

[Monika Gause]

I do not know about the why.

Please post feature requests to https://illustrator.uservoice.com 

[Srishti Bali]

Hi @DesignFish,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience with object alignment in Illustrator. I hope the issue has been resolved by now. If not, could you please provide a bit more information to help us understand the problem better?

• Your operating system and version of Illustrator
• A small video demonstrating the issue and a sample file that was used
• Does this happen randomly or every time you align objects?

We're here to help and will do our best to assist you once we have more details.

Regards,

Srishti