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Hi everyone,
Hoping somebody can help - a graphic I made has been covered in grey blocks (see image attached). When I highlight everything, the outline of each layer is still visible but I can't get rid of the grey blocks. Any idea what's wrong? I reset preferences and restarted but this didn't do anything. The file was quite large for the computer I'm currently working on, causing illustrator to crash several times, but it only ever required a restart and I was back in business. I can't seem to access any previous versions of this file either, even though I had automatic recovery set up. 😞
Any help much appreciated, thank you!
Megan
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Can you share the file?
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I don't think whatever has happened here is recoverable unless you have a backup file. Every element in the file has the same appearance.
What happened when this occured? A crash? Any specific error messages?
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Yeah it crashed and when I restarted this is how it was appearing 😞 Thanks for checking it out anyway!
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A good starting point is to select all and, if the fill/stroke indicator in the Toolbar, Control bar, Color panel, etc. show everything having the same grey fill, exchange the fill and stroke. Otherwise, select an object, then go to the Select menu > Same > Fill Color then swap fill and stroke (shift + X).
You can then select individual shapes and add fills or change strokes as necessary.
In other words, the file does not appear to me to be corrupt, and I have no explanation for the behavior you have observed.
Peter
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Thanks so much Peter, this is definitely a good starting point! Glad that all is not completely lost!
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As far as I can see. all the shapes are filled gray. When I inverted Fill/Stroke, all the elements became visible, with all their brushes and effects. I suppose that there was some occasional action in the previous working session
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Thanks Anna, at least I'm not back to square one! 🙂