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Participating Frequently
June 17, 2021
Answered

Escape key no longer working to exit out of text box

  • June 17, 2021
  • 5 replies
  • 7262 views

This has been causing major hiccups in my designing. I design with type a lot as a branding & packaging designer and this makes me want to scream.

 

I keep hitting esc to get out of the text box/type tool, and then v to switch to select tool, and it. is. not. working. And it's leaving me with a lot of 'v's throughout my txt boxes and it's causing me to have spelling erros on client work that I don't catch because I'm so used to this.
Plus it is slowing me down so much as this was a shortcut I CONSTANTLY use.

 

WHY did this change? HOW Can I change it back? I will do anything for this to come back.

Correct answer Michel S.

Resetting preferences worked in Illustrator 2024 (windows)

5 replies

Participant
February 12, 2025

Turning off Siri worked for me too.

 

Participant
August 22, 2024

I was happily pressing Escape to quit the text tool until yesterday, August 21, 2024.

 

Now, I can no longer press escape to quit the text tool. Instead, I have to move the mouse cursor and select some other tool with the mouse.

Anubhav M
Community Manager
Community Manager
August 22, 2024

Hello @kamil 2020-21270546062jvw,

We understand that encountering technical issues can be frustrating. Would you mind trying to run Illustrator under Safe Mode (Windows / macOS) and checking if it helps?


Also, kindly disable plugins (if any) and share your observations.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

 

Thanks,

Anubhav

Participant
August 22, 2024

Hi @Anubhav M 

 

I closed and re-opened Illustrator, and now Escape works again.

 

This experience has taught me that that we need to close and re-open Adobe Illustrator every few minutes, because it is unstable and unpredictable.

Participant
March 22, 2023

For me it turned out to be a bug related to Siri! I just disabled Siri from my system preferences and everything started working perfectly. 

https://setapp.com/how-to/fix-escape-key-not-working-on-mac#:~:text=The%20fastest%20way%20to%20check,next%20to%20%22Enable%20Accessibility%20Keyboard%22

sishamIAGD
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 17, 2021
themelloAuthor
Participating Frequently
June 17, 2021

Thanks -  I reset my keyboard increment preferences that I found in another forum and it helped, so I assume resetting the preferences is really what would help too. Thank you so much!

Participant
July 11, 2022

What did you do?! Share the other forum plz! Adobe is such trash now. Going to switch to something else the second I have the time. Not having enough time is the only reason I haven't left adobe already. So slow, so laggy, so out of touch. Pathetic. 

sishamIAGD
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 17, 2021

Have you tried resetting your preferences? What system are you on? It works for me on Windows, Illustrator v25.3

Michel S.Correct answer
Participant
December 11, 2024

Resetting preferences worked in Illustrator 2024 (windows)