Cursor stuck on pencil tool

[chloe.e.f]

I'm in Illustrator 5.5 and my cursor is stuck on the pencil tool. I can't change the tool with either my mouse or hot keys. I can't even select all my artwork to paste into a new file. Help?

[Jacob Bugge]

Chloe,

Hopefully, you can save the artwork.

I can't even select all my artwork to paste into a new file.

What about Ctrl/Cmd+A in the old one, then Ctrl/Cmd+F in the new one?

You may try going through this general list.

You may try the following (you may have tried/done some of them already) and see whether it helps (the following is a general list of things you may try when the issue is not in a specific file; 3) and 4) are specifically aimed at possibly corrupt preferences):

1) Close down Illy and open again;

2) Restart the computer (you may do that up to 3 times);

3) Close down Illy and press Ctrl+Alt+Shift/Cmd+Option+Shift during startup (easy but irreversible);

4) Move the folder with Illy closed (more tedious but also more thorough and reversible);

5) Look through and try out the relevant among the Other options (Item 7) is a list of usual suspects among other applications that may disturb and confuse Illy);

Even more seriously, you may:

6) Uninstall, run the Cleaner Tool, and reinstall.

http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cscleanertool.html

[chloe.e.f]

Thanks for responding, Jacob.

I can only save when quitting. None of the hot keys work 😞

[chloe.e.f]

What does option 3) do?

[Jacob Bugge]

Chloe,

3) resets the basic preferences to default; 4) resets the whole folder with more preferences (and is reversible). Neither to be confused with the Edit>Preferences settings.

Your issue could very well be corrupt preferences. And resetting to default should rid you of corruptions.

To rescue artwork with only the Pen Tool available, you may use it through some of the dropdown menus, such as Select>Object to select as much as you can, then Edit>Paste in Front in the new document.

[chloe.e.f]

Just FYI, I fixed it by going into the layers options and clicking "Release to Layers (Build)"

Thanks!

[Jacob Bugge]

Thank you for reporting back, Chloe.

A strange solution. What made you try that?

[emil emil]

Jacob Bugge wrote:

...

A strange solution. What made you try that?

Based on the rest of Chloe's input, I guess after trying everything, this was the only or first thing possible to do.

Sorry Jacob, I couldn't resist 

[Jacob Bugge]

That makes sense, Emil.

[pamelakirkpatrick]

Thank you, thank you . . . @

[RunnelsWrap]

this worked for me! I didn't even try the other options. for some reason I did this before anything and unlocked the layers and the tool changed to the one I last clicked on. Thank you

[Sbeth85]

Chloe, Thank you!

I had the same problem. I'd restarted Illustrator but the pencil icon was still stuck.

Somehow clicking the Eyeballs on all the Layers in my Layers Panel (aka View All Layers) released the icon! So random.

Whenever I try to turn off the view on a layer, it goes back to being stuck again

But the major problem is solved. Who would have thought it was linked to Layers?

Thanks!

[anneo67293468]

Thanks Chloe had the same problem & was going demented and your solution worked for me too

[armand54451303]

i had the same go to tools then press cursor i hope it helped even if its for others =]

[Rajdeepchakraborty]

may be you are trying to work on locked layer ...