Participant

Answered

How do I retrieve an off-screen dialog box?

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
July 28, 2010
12 replies
73382 views

I am using two screens and moving Illustrator to the larger screen from my laptop so that I can see things better. I am still using CS2. One day for reasons I still do not understand, my PDF dialog box disappeared. Illustrator thinks it is there, but the only thing I can do is escape out of it. I can't save a file as a PDF, and I need to do that on a regular basis. I even tried uninstalling and reinstalling CS2, but it did not change anything.

Does anyone know how to retrieve a dialog box that has gone off the screens?

Thanks!

Correct answer prodic

If you're on a PC try the following:

1. Press Alt+Space

2. Press m

3. Use your arrow-keys once or two.

4. Move your mouse or pen around.

This should result in you seeing a vague dotted outline of your dialog-box.

Once you're able to see that hit enter to reposition it and later on resize it.

This happend a lot with CS2 and especielly in a 2 monitor setup.

D

default5z8b67u64n9o

Participant

take any another window (like pathfinder, appearance, layers, etc) and move it to your stuck window, it will connect to it and they you double click the bottom bar and it'll pop back on your screen

digitalembic

Known Participant

Your "solution" does not apply to this reported problem. When a MODAL DIALOG BOX pops up somewhere offscreen: A) you can't click on anything else in the app; B) even if you could, panels do not snap to dialog boxes; and 3) even if you COULD drag a panel completely off the edge of the screen and somehow have it "stick" to a dialog box (which it cannot do), you don't know where the dialog box is to begin with because you can't see it.

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @digitalembic,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Would you mind sharing more details, like the OS/Illustrator version, and a screen recording of the problem (if possible), so I can check it with the team?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

D

defaultiz8wyxnhqb35

Participant

I totally understand why Adobe Illustrator hasn't fixed this. Its such and edge case, creatives never use a secondary monitor. Personally, I really like to work exclusively off my laptops 13" screen - images, vectors, typography, all are easier to view on the smallest screen possible.

Olivié Charbonneau

Participating Frequently

Bro you should try to design on your mobile it's the best experience, garantied without off-screen windows.

Why should Adobe ever fix this ?

Olivié Charbonneau

Participating Frequently

If you lost your dialog windows on a multi-screen setup (typicaly a dialog window is out of frame in a disabled or turned of screen) : disable the second / tird screen temporarily, close application, launch application. All dialog windows are reset to their default position in the single screen. Re-enable second / third screen.

SHornbaek

Participant

I have multiple screens and got the same problem on Windows 10. The table settings pop-up was displaying all the way up (and above) the screen. I solved it this way:

1. Re-create the error (I opened the table settings pop-up).

2. Open display settings (in windows) from the desktop > right click > display settings

3. Move another window above (depending on your case) and click apply. (see screenshot, red is the moved screen and dotted green is the faulty pop-up).

4. Now the top of the pop-up is showing on the screen above the faulty one and you should be able to move the pop-up to the right position!

5. (optional) move back the screens to the original position within display settings in windows.

Delevision

Participating Frequently

This method worked for me.

I have a tri-monitor setup running on Windows 11. The "Save As" dialog was somehow erroneously placed way above the middle screen such that it was irretrievable. (I wonder if a flaky optical mouse could cause this, because sometimes the screen pointer jumps around like it's warping into hyperspace. I am also trying a different mouse now.)

I tried all the other methods described, above, in this thread, and none worked until I tried this method.

Thank you!

J

jamie Pritchett

Participant

On a Powerbook, I had this issue with panels being off screen. Fix is to go to System Preferences. Click on Display, then choose the "scaled" radio button, then click on "more space". Your screen will resize to much smaller text and boxes. Grab any offending panels and drop them into the panel on the side. Then you can resize back to normal and use the panel normally.

E

embishop

Participant

This comes up from time to time with the top of the Properties panel disappearing off the screen in Premiere Pro for some unknown reason. The workaround I found is changing the screen resolution so that I can drag the panel and drop it into an existing group. Then return the screen resolution to it previous size and the panel will stay in that group.

skylero75349743

Participant

If you are working on a PC with Windows 10. You can go to taskbar settings and toggle the "automatically hide the taskbar in desktop mode" switch this brought my off-screen dialogue box back onto the screen.

VoltisArt

Participant

I know it's been some time since this question was posted, but I can confirm that this is in the AIPrefs file in CS2. (C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS2 Settings\) It is really easy to edit in basic text without needing to destroy all your other prefs or perform magic tricks with the keyboard. The PDF dialogue's options are in a section that starts as follows:

}

/PDFExport {

/DlgPosX 582

/DlgPosY 218

I lost my preferences dialogue and fixed it in this section, where "h" was previously negative:

}

/preferencesDialog {

/position {

/h 598

/v 364

}

The sections move around each time you use and close Illustrator, so you'll need to search for them as needed. Even the h and v lines may switch! Do enough digging and it looks like you can find almost any preference that can be changed in there.

Remember to close Illustrator BEFORE saving the hand-edited file or you will lose your new settings!