Help Finding the Decimal Point Preference for Scaling in Illustrator

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Hi I am trying to get illustrator to scale using decimal points. I add 40.35% for example, but when I scale, the decimal point disappears and its become 4035%.

Is there somewhere in preferences that allows me to allow decimal points e.g. 30.456%.

Thanks Steve

[Jacob Bugge · Accepted solution]

Steve,

Are you sure the decimal point is a point/full stop (.) and not a comma (,)? It depends on the

language (setting).

Whenever you can, it more accurate to let Illy (job description Adobe Illustrator, and she is always eager to help) perform the calculation.

You can use 100 times the actual desired size, then add / and then add the actual size, to get in as scale in %.

Or just replace the actual size by the desired size in the Transform palette, remembering to keep the proportions.

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Thank you so much Jacob, you are correct, I had the region set as Indonesia (living in Bali myself) and yes, they use a comma not a full stop. So I tried the comma and yes that worked fine.

I changed the settings to Australia/English and now it works fine with the full stop. Thanks again, I would not have found that in a million years haha!

All the best my friend, Steve 🙂

[Jacob Bugge]

You are welcome, Steve, and thank you for your kind words.

The decimal stop is a sneaky thing that has haunted many over the decades.

As you might guess, I leave the calculations to Illy, unless the scaling is really simple and accurate.

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You know something funny Jacob, I was a young lad when we bought our first Mac Plus where I worked in a small publishing firm in Adelaide and we installed Illustrator 1.0 in 1987 on floppy disks, true story. My life was never going to be the same after that. Here we are in 2025 with the latest M4 macs and software and still you never stop learning, even the smallest things. Thanks again, I have shared this story with a few colleagues as well and we all had a little chuckle over it. 🙂

[Jacob Bugge]

Now that was some story, Steve. Thank you very much for sharing.