File > Scripts > Other Scripts... Menu doesn't work

[Siev]

A few members of my team are having trouble running scripts, while others are not having problems. The members with problems became unable to run any scripts using the File > Scripts > Other Scripts... menu. Even the most basic 1-line script consisting of a single alert dialog fail and return the same error:

"Internal Script Execution Error"

Everyone is using Illustrator 27.0. Users on both windows and mac machines were able to run scripts with no problem. So far, I know one thing in common between the users with problems is that they're on iMacs, but I don't know if every iMac user is having the same problem.

We did eventually find that if we install the scripts into illustrator's script folder and restart the app, they are able to exectute the scripts directly from the menu. So they haven't lost all function, just the ability to select scripts in other locations.

I'm still trying to narrow down exactly when this problem appeared and who it affects but any insight into the cause would be helpful.

[Monika Gause]

MacOS is very peculiar about user privileges. Does Illustrator have full disk access?

Exactly where are those scripts located?

[m1b · Accepted solution]

I was thinking the same thing, Monika. The issue may seem more confusing if the act of copying the script into the /Presets/Scripts folder in Applications changed the file permissions (in which case it would have asked user to authenticate as admin). That alone might explain your results.

I did the following test: saved a script on my Desktop., then changed the file's owner to another user account (not me) and removed other access privileges. Get Info looked like this:

Now when I run this script in Illustrator using Other Script... the script wouldn't run. (In my case it gave me no error message at all though.)

But then I copied the script file into Applications/Adobe Illustrator/Presets/Scripts and MacOS asked me to authenticate, which I did. And now Get Info shows this:

It has made me the file's owner, and now the script runs fine, even if I move it and use Other Script menu.

The easiest fix is to give the script Read access to "everyone". It is also possible that your installer system may alter permissions.

- Mark

[Siev]

I share scripts with the team via dropbox folder. After you brought up permissions, I started to worry that dropbox was messing around too much with permissions.

Turns out, the users having problems had their local folder's syncing set to online only.  Maybe they forgot about their sync settings or maybe they assumed the script file would sync automatically as documents do when you open them.

Everything is working now.

[m1b]

Ah! That makes perfect sense. Nothing we could have known here, but nice to have closure on it! Thanks for letting us know.