Illustrator CS6 Spacebar stops working seemingly randomly

[Gordon McAlpin]

This is an infrequent issue I've had, but it has happened more than once in the last few weeks that I've been using CS6 on a regular basis:

On occasion, my spacebar will just stop working in Illustrator CS6, so I can't use the hand tool or zoom or… you know, type, basically making Illustrator unuseable. Now, I'm PRETTY sure it has nothing to do with my actual keyboard, because the spacebar will continue to work just fine in every other application even after it does this.

The only fix is restarting the computer. Just restarting the application doesn't do it. Deleting the preferences file and restarting doesn't fix it. It's really perplexing.

Now, I'm NOT certain about this, but I think it might occur after waking from sleep (but not immediately, so perhaps it's unrelated). If/when it happens next, I will attempt to see if I can reproduce the issue, but so far I have no idea why it happens; it just seems random.

I'm using a late 2008 MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM, running Mac OSX 10.7.4 and Illustrator CS6 (16.0.0, in case people see this after an update has been released).

[Aeizalt123]

Really? This question was asked 3 years ago and Adobe still doesn't have a fix for it?

Well anyway, I closed Chrome and reopened it, on a Mac here at work. That did the trick.

I'm a 50 year old woodworker living in the forest hills. I have a grey beard and scruffy old work clothes, and I like to carve walking sticks on the weekends. My home is comfortable but disorganized. I have a slightly standoffish demeanour, as if you just insulted me merely by being in my presence. I seem as if I will be happier when you're gone, but if you look me in the eye and talk to me like an equal I'll tolerate you and allow you to listen to my extremely valuable and candid, if uninformed, opinions on whatever we're talking about. Even though you may be friendly I'll still act as though you wronged me somehow, and I won't look back after we say goodbye, even if we ended up having a nice interaction and I seemed like I was relaxed. Afterward, you will somehow feel like a jerk for even talking to me, and wonder what you did wrong.

[whisk@]

Why is this still a problem?  Where are you Adobe and why haven't you put out a fix for it.  I've tried all the suggestions on this thread and the only thing that will work is to shut down everything and re-boot my macbook pro.  Very unhelpful and extremely annoying.  The Spacebar Handtool short is no doubt THE most used tool in Illustrator!

For the record, I'm using Adobe CC 2016, on a Macbook Pro (Mid 2012), 2.7GHz, 16GB DDR3, OS X El Capitan 10.11.2.

It is so counter productive to have to shut down everything, everytime this happens.  Probably happens twice a month for me.

[ptrnelson]

Illustrator has been super buggy since I upgraded to CC. This is just one of them. Force quitting Safari immediately solved it for me. Thanks again Adobe!

  Model Name: MacBook Pro

  Model Identifier: MacBookPro11,2

  Processor Name: Intel Core i7

  Processor Speed: 2.2 GHz

  Number of Processors: 1

  Total Number of Cores: 4

  L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

  L3 Cache: 6 MB

  Memory: 16 GB

[JohnB8122]

So far I have identified three things that cause this behavior for me:

1. Webroot security has Secure Keyboard Entry (much like Terminal app as mentioned in another thread) enabled by default. When I turned this off I had my modifiers back.

2. 1Password. As long as I was logged in, my modifiers wouldn't work.

3. LastPass. Same as 1Password. I found that even after LastPass had logged me out after inactivity my modifiers still didn't work. I had to login, then out and I had my spacebar and other modifiers back.

I would bet those that assume Chrome is the problem would find that it's an extension added to Chrome, not the browser itself. My LastPass is a browser extension.

Hope this helps

[Randy Steward]

I have a similar problem on both my laptop and imac at work. Best I can tell is a paused video (maybe just youtube?) in any browser(application?) seems to create the issue. I have't tested it fully but that seems to be the most consistent correlation in my experience. This also seems to affect illustrator photoshop and indesign for me. Basically there is an override on the spacebar.

If you have a video paused in a browser or application you must fully quit the application (this goes beyond just closing all the windows). I am actually experiencing the issue right now. I closed a window that had a paused video, and the problem didn't resolve. When I quit chrome altogether, 95% chance it'll be fixed.

[AeriiDesign]

Had the same issue -  found a quick fix - I copied and pasted all contents into a new document/artboard and my space key began working fine.  And I deleted the problem art file.

[gadler528]

This is still happening in Illustrator CC

[oskao29974346]

I have this same problem too, no matter I tried cs6/cc ,my AI spacebar-hans tool are still not working.

It was happened after I update my Imac to the last verson and then I found there are some new option appeared on my Wacom drawing pad. there are spacebar shortcut on my drawing pad when I using AI/photoshop.

After this my keyboard spacebar shortcut no longer working. 

[cristel_h]

Solved! (LOL)

In my case, I'm using Illustrator CS6.

I quitted everything I was using, including Illustrator, and the H (spacebar) tool didn't work.

But, as everyone said, the spacebar worked perfectly as I typed text. It just didn't work with the "H" tool.

The last thing I quitted, was Safari.

Came back to Illustrator, and the spacebar DID WORK!! (no need to quit it again nor restart the whole mac)

I launched Safari again, see if it works... and it did. Yaay!

[Gav Beattie]

So, this issue has been going on for FOUR years and still no bug fix from Adobe? The best people can hope to do is quit various applications and hope for the best?

[© Si]

I agree... Not a single word from Adobe in all this time! It's a bloody disgrace!!

[rohang99305705]

I tried quitting every app that was running and checked which app was causing the problem.

For me it was webroot secureanywhere app that caused the spacebar hand shortcut malfunction.

[husseinn33568129]

I quit chrome and it is working fine.

Adobe illustrator CC 2015.3.0

OS X 10.11.2

[piratejabez]

After narrowing it down to Chrome, I decided to start closing my extensions and then my tabs one by one. For me the culprit was—get this—Adobe's website. True story.

[romeoz4007596]

I've been dealing with this for a while and none of the solutions above have worked. I'm on a Win10 - Lenovo X1 laptop, with Illustrator CC 2015.3. I was about to give up since there hasn't been any response from Adobe (shockingly </sarcasm>) when I accidentally discovered something, the shortcut has changed. Instead of space bar and mouse its:

Alt + Space bar more specifically: Space bar + Alt I got the hand tool, clicked the mouse to get the hand to grab the document and move it around.

[romeoz4007596]

Also In Photoshop CC 2015.5 it is Shift + Space bar

I discovered this today.

[bentChainRing]

For me, running El Capitan, the app blocking the A.I. keyboard shortcuts for Hand and Zoom tools was Safari. I needed to go into preferences for Safari and uncheck the "CMD" key shortcuts that deal with activating certain tabs under the "tabs" tab, if that makes sense. Then I had to quit Safari and restart it, in order for Illustrator to work properly in terms of Hand and Zoom tool shortcuts.

Prior to figuring out it was Safari I went through every app that was active, turning off any app preference that had anything to do with the CMD key and shortcuts. Nothing affected AI until I got to Safari. This includes the system prefs for shortcuts.

[ipearx3]

Thanks, I turned these Safari tab options off then on again, and Illustrator started working again. In a fresh install of Illustrator on OSX Sierra. So shouldn't need to leave them off. Weird.

[Raffi Tarpinian]

I found a solution that works for me, I quit Safari, and it started to work immediately even after I relaunched Safari. I use to restart the computer, which drove me nuts.

[banat55451316]

Hey Guys,

I had the same issue here so I contacted Adobe support and the solution they gave me worked.

Problem:

Hand Tool keyboard shortcut (Spacebar) doesn't work on Illustrator, Indesign, and Photoshop CC for Mac.

Answer:

1- Reboot your computer on Safe Mode

2- Open up the applications and test the Hand tool - (it worked)

3- Restart your computer normally and it should work fine after doing that.

I hope you find this helpful.

Cheers,

[Guest]

i found this and it worked for me
i haven't tried copying all the contents from the old one to the new one, but for now i just typed what i need and copied it to the so called corrupted file ^^ it worked ok.
https://content.pivotal.io/blog/fixing-broken-keyboard-shortcuts-in-adobe-illustrator

PS: i am using windows 8 adobe illustrator CC

[mkov88]

Completely close your internet browser(s)

[chopshopstore.com]

It was 1Password for me.

[ryanf8254161]

Quit Safari and reopen. Go back to Illustrator and try the (spacebar) shortcut.

Should work.

[fredm6234042]

I discovered this problem today - I have an IMac 10.11.6 and use CC 2017 - the issue arose when I installed Webroot SecureAnywhere to protect my Mac. This was causing the conflict, as soon as I stopped it running in the background (turn-off from the top right-hand side of your desktop toolbar) the problem was solved.