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Gordon McAlpin
Participant
June 21, 2012
Question

Illustrator CS6 Spacebar stops working seemingly randomly

  • June 21, 2012
  • 57 replies
  • 134916 views

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).

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    57 replies

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    R
    Raffi Tarpinian
    Participant
    October 30, 2016

    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.

    B
    bentChainRing
    Participant
    October 1, 2016

    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.

    I
    ipearx3
    Participant
    November 22, 2016

    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.

    romeoz4007596
    romeoz4007596
    Participant
    September 29, 2016

    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
    romeoz4007596
    Participant
    September 30, 2016

    Also In Photoshop CC 2015.5 it is Shift + Space bar

    I discovered this today.

    P
    piratejabez
    Participating Frequently
    September 8, 2016

    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.

      H
      husseinnaser
      Participant
      August 15, 2016

      I quit chrome and it is working fine.

      Adobe illustrator CC 2015.3.0

      OS X 10.11.2

      rohang99305705
      rohang99305705
      Participant
      July 18, 2016

      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.

      Gav Beattie
      Gav Beattie
      Participant
      June 16, 2016

      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
        © Si
        Inspiring
        July 24, 2016

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

        cristel_h
        cristel_h
        Participant
        June 9, 2016

        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!

        O
        oskao29974346
        Participant
        May 6, 2016

        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. 

        gadler528
        gadler528
        Participant
        April 7, 2016

        This is still happening in Illustrator CC

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