Can't Resize Artboard Freely in Illustrator 2025

[itss24371599]

in Illustrator 2024 I could create any size artboard I wanted. Where has that function gone in 2025?

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[Doug A Roberts]

What is preventing you? What difference between versions are you experiencing?

[itss24371599]

As I said, in Ilustrator 2024 (Mac) i would tick the "artboard" icon and could drag the boundaries to any size.  In 2025, there is no such icon..

[Bobby Henderson]

Adobe Illustrator has always had upper limits for canvas sizes. By the way, all vector graphics applications have canvas size limits; none offer unlimited canvas sizes. When Illustrator was based on Postscript the size limit was around 120" X 120". The change from Postscript to PDF with Illustrator 9 bumped the canvas size limit up to 227" X 227". That was 25 years ago. It has already been 5 years since Illustrator's large canvas mode was introduced with version 24.2. That mode merely does some internal trickery to make artboards up to 2275" X 2275" possible.

[Ton Frederiks]

The Large Canvas option that Bobby mentioned is only available when you create a new document.

You cannot create artboards larger than 227 inches in a regular canvas document and you cannot convert a regular to a large canvas document.

[Bobby Henderson]

That's right. Another serious work flow issue: few if any applications outside Illustrator will import AI or PDF files with large canvas sizes preserved. The artwork will often be reduced to 10% of its original size.

[itss24371599]

Sorry, and thank you, but none of this addresses my question. I'm not trying to create a huge drawing, I'm trying to control the artboard size myself.  Thanks.

[Doug A Roberts · Accepted solution]

This is the artboard tool in the default 'Advanced' toolbar:

[itss24371599]

brilliant thank you so much!

[Doug A Roberts]

Would you mind clarifying what had changed for you? It may help other users in a similar position.

[itss24371599]

Sure - it was just your answer - I had no idea the "Advanced Toolbar" existed, but there is the artboards icon within it, as your screen shot showed.  Hugely appreciate the help.

[Doug A Roberts]

As far as I can tell the artboard tool is in both the Basic and Advanced defaul toolbars.

Did your preferences reset? You may want to select 'Import Previous Settings' next time you update.

[itss24371599]

Definitely not in my "basic" - but I'll keep in mind the advice to import previous settings. Thank you again.