Illustrator 28.0 Forgets Preferences

[Safrole Jay]

Win10 64 bit.

Every time the program boots, the preferences are back to default. Also the workspace is set back to default and the keyboard shortcuts are also back to default.

When I load my saved workspace --not that I should have to-- it still has the View->Smart Guides turned back on, and it also ignores the fact that the sidebar window tabs of "Properties" and "Libraries" were closed when the custom workspace was saved.

On a positive note, once I load my custom keys --not that I should have to--  those are applied without error.

[Anubhav M · Accepted solution]

Hello @Safrole Jay,

We are sorry to hear about this experience. Would you mind trying to manually reset Illustrator's preferences and then importing your settings to check if it helps:

For macOS

• Close all Adobe applications.

• Go to the following locations

• ~/Library/Caches

• ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe

• ~/Library/Preferences

• Rename Adobe Illustrator, com.adobe.illustrator and Adobe Illustrator 28 Settings folders to Adobe Illustrator.old, com.adobe.illustrator.old and Adobe Illustrator 28 Settings.old

• Launch Illustrator from the Creative Cloud.

Note: Location starting with this "~" sign indicates the User Library, which is hidden. So, you need to copy & paste the exact path in spotlight search or from Finder Menu > Go > Go to Folder > Paste the location in the dialog box like this:

For Windows

- Close all Adobe applications.

- Go to Location C:\Users\%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Adobe

- Rename Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Illustrator 28 Settings folders to Adobe Illustrator.old and Adobe Illustrator - 28 Settings.old

- Relaunch Illustrator from Creative Cloud

Disclaimer: Please note that renaming preferences folders will remove all the custom settings, and Illustrator will launch with default settings. You can also save a backup of the folders in case you want to. The location is mentioned above.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Anubhav

[Safrole Jay]

This fixed it. The problem was when I copied the old custom keys file to the new settings folder. The previous version had a subfolder called "Adobe Illustrator Prefs" where my file "mykeys.kys" was stored. The new version does not; the new version keeps the ".kys" files in the "x64" folder of the settings folder. When I mistakenly created the old style subfolder, I probably interfered with the app's ability to write to the directory or something like that. But oddly enough, my keys file was still visible and useable even from the "wrong" subdirectory.