HELP........ What is this cursor icon!?

[JG666]

Excuse the horrible photo. I couldn't get print screen to capture the cursor!

Does anyone know what this symbol means? It pops up on my cursor around certain bits of the designs i've been working on recently, never seen it before..... It's generally when I hover to the side of the selected object. But it doesn't seem to do anything?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks.

[Doug A Roberts]

Can you share a screenshot of your whole workspace?

[JG666]

Unfortunately not as im working on private client artwork.... I could do one without anything on the artboard but not sure this would be of any help?

[Doug A Roberts]

Possibly. Could you keep the relevant object selected and show the layers and appearance panels with it off-screen?

[JG666]

It's a bunch of grouped vector text/logo that's all on one layer... Along with loads of other stuff on the same layer because of my epic organisational skills.... Does this help at all?

[JG666]

[Monika Gause]

Can you go into the Help menu and check out whether there are any plugins installed?

[JG666]

Nothing I can see, I recently had a fresh install of windows 11 and haven't installed any to my knowledge...?

[Anubhav M · Accepted solution]

Hello @JG666,

We understand how troubling having your cursor change appearance in the middle of work can be. I hope the suggestions shared by Doug and Monika helped resolve the problem.

If not, kindly try resetting Illustrator's preferences as described in this article (https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/troubleshoot-preference-issues.html) and check if it helps.

Disclaimer: Please note that resetting preferences will remove all custom settings, and Illustrator will launch with the defaults. You may save a backup of these settings from the location mentioned in the article.

Also, try running Illustrator under a different administrator account (Windows / macOS) and sharing your observations.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Anubhav

[JG666]

Hi Anubhav,

Thanks for your reply...

I've just exported my preferences, reset them, then imported mine back again and that seems to have sorted it!

Still love to know what it it was meant to be as i've never seen the icon before.... I'd asked a couple of friends who have been using AI alot longer than me and they hadn't seen it either.

Anyway, all fixed so i'm happy!

Thankyou!