Illustrator freezing (endlessly loading) when saving or opening any files

[user8005631]

Hi there,

I am having a big problem with Illustrator 2019. It was working fine until a few days ago when all of a sudden I went to save a very basic vector file and it showed the loading icon continuously (within the force quit menu it said the app had stopped responding). The file had been saved to the desktop, but illustrator had frozen. The same thing started happening whenever I went to open a file - it would just have the loading icon until I force quit the application.

I have tried:

- Reinstalling illustrator (twice)

- Installing illustrator 2018

- Installing the pre-release build

- Deleting every single file on my computer library relating to the illustrator application between reinstalls

Nothing was working! Yesterday I updated my operating system and miraculously, illustrator started working again. However, it was a short lived success, as today, the fourth file I started working on, I went to save and the endless loading icon reappeared. Now the same problem has come back in force and I cannot get illustrator to open files or continue working once it has saved files. I am at my wits end. I spent all weekend trying to fix it as I rely on illustrator for my job, but I can't cope like this! The fact that updating my operating system seemed to make a difference did make me think that perhaps the issue is my mac, but illustrator is the only application it is having any difficulties with. The only new thing that coincided with the issue was installing a Huion driver for my new graphics tablet.

For reference, my computer's specs:

iMac (27 inch, late 2013)

Running macOS Mojave - version 10.14.2

Processor: 3.5 GHz Intel Core i7

Memory: 32 GB

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB

[Monika Gause]

Is a printer connected, set up as default printer and turned on?

[user8005631]

Yes, two in fact.

[Monika Gause]

Is the default printer accessible without problems for Illustrator?

You need to check what is set up in your system as the default. Is it turned on?

No printer queue as Illustrator has issues with that as well.

[Mike_Gondek]

Did you  Use the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool to solve installation problems ?

For a quicker resolution quit Adobe cloud and  remove the OOBE files  as I suspect that your OOBE cache is corrupted

How to fix the issue of Adobe Creative Cloud desktop app not opening or showing a spinning progress ...

• Quit Creative Cloud desktop app from the three vertical dots icon at the upper-right corner.

• Browse to/Users/<user folder>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/OOBE The \Users\<user folder>\Library\ is hidden by default after 10.7. See Access hidden user library files | Mac OS 10.7 and later for instructions on accessing it.
• Delete the entire contents of the OOBE folder.

• Restart the computer and launch Creative Cloud desktop app again.

The cleaner totally gets rid of everything such as the OOBE,

the Illustrator prefs.

You may also have a hardware issue. Run disk utility to fix permissions and bad blocks. You can resart your mac in recovery mode and run a hardware  test.

[user8005631]

Thank you both for your help! I am very relieved to report that the problem seems to be fixed (touch wood).

I did delete the OOBE folder contents as well as run the disk utility and it seems to have worked. Hopefully it won't repeat yesterday's trick of lulling me into a false sense of security and then breaking again.

Thanks again!

[Mike_Gondek]

You should be good, but if the issue resurfaces we are here to help.

[Srishti Bali]

Hi there,

Sorry to hear about this issue. Could you please confirm where the files are saved(Network Drive/ System HDD/ Shared Folder on System /External HDD). Illustrator does not support network or removable drives as scratch disks, or folders of file sync services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and icloud.

Please check if the icloud service is turned on please turn it off from system preferences and let us know if that helps.

Regards,

Srishti

[user8005631]

Hi there,

The files are saved on my computer and I do also use iCloud. Those settings are enabled already.

[Monika Gause]

Illustrator has issues with Cloud services.

This includes iCloud.

Does it work when you work with folders that are not synched by iCloud?

[user8005631]

It doesn't work with files that are saved just on my computer and not on iCloud. I have a folder that I do not have uploaded to iCloud. I moved an old file to it and tried to open it and no luck. I can't save any new ones in it to test as illustrator won't save.

I can't disable iCloud as most of my files are saved there. I just did to experiment and it left with me with basically nothing on my computer. What is odd is that this issue started on Friday ages after I had updated Illustrator and had made no changes to my iCloud usage. I don't see how it could be linked.

[Mike_Gondek]

Have you tried running CC 2018 as a test.

As srishtib mentioned earlier Adobe does not support sync services. Though they try to do what they can, is best to work off your hard drive to have the best reliability.

[Mike_Gondek]

If you quit all apps including the Adobe cloud, and ran the cleaner and reinstalled then that covers all the quick fix suggestions I would have had for resetting various caches, prefs and databases Illustrator and  Adobe Cloud .

Thanks for mentioning icloud,as your issue may be with that, can you disable and test running without that.

Also are you doing a save as on all your .ai files and turning off pdf compatible. When on by default that makes your files larger which aggravates anything like icloud running in background. You also may want to check that your hardwire RJ45 connection to internet is on, and not just your wireless.

Opening and saving files are slow, i would suspect one of the clouds is hanging your system.

How to downgrade from macOS Mojave to High Sierra

This one takes some time and effort,  but would stay away form Mojave. They just threw that OS out there and have not addressed the many issues that causes for Adobe apps for months now

[Srishti Bali]

  wrote

Hi there,

The files are saved on my computer and I do also use iCloud. Those settings are enabled already.

Please disable those settings and check again.

Regards,

Srishti

[user8005631]

So no luck. It worked for another 24 hours and then the problem reemerged - randomly too. I had been working on several files, went to save one and it froze again.

I tried repeating the same steps as before - deleting the contents of the OOBE folder - and I also tried the Adobe CC cleaner. Neither has worked this time. It's pretty depressing and I don't really understand why this is happening (again, the issue is just with illustrator). I have used this application since I was a kid in the 90s and I use it every day and have never had any trouble with it.