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Participant
April 6, 2022
Answered

Illustrator only showing shape outline when moving

  • April 6, 2022
  • 4 replies
  • 3845 views

First post here, sorry for the lack of detail in the title. 

 

I'm working on a project in Illustrator and everything was working normally before, but after about 3 minutes of working without the internet, Illustrator started acting up and I'm not sure how to fix it. Normally, when I'm trying to move a shape or object, it moves that shape or object; now, Illustrator is instead moving the outline of that shape/object while leaving the shape/object in its original location. Once I release the button, it moves the shape/object to wherever the outline is, but because of the way I'm trying to build the image, I need to see the object itself is aligning the way I want it to. When I go with the outline, it often has a slight skew to it when it's placed so it's inhibiting more than assisting right now. Does anyone know how to fix this?

 

The image provided shows the object and what it looks like when I try to move it.

Correct answer paul_M107

I solved my problem with the most overlooked solution. I restarted illustrator!!

4 replies

Participant
March 7, 2025

I am having the same problem in Illustrator 2025, but the answer is not changing the GPU/CPU mode, that is not having any affect on the situation.  a while ago there was a setting, something like, "see preview while dragging"

paul_M107Correct answer
Participant
March 7, 2025

I solved my problem with the most overlooked solution. I restarted illustrator!!

Kurt Gold
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 6, 2022

Also note that in case the GPU preview is turned on, Illustrator sometimes may ignore the real time drawing while dragging objects and instead behaves as if real time drawing is turned off.

 

Depends on what objects you are going to drag.

 

Ton Frederiks
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 6, 2022

Check if GPU Preview is active, this will enable real Time Drawing and Editing (see also Preferences > Performance).

Participant
April 7, 2022

Ah this was it. Not sure how it turned on, it says the keystroke is Ctrl + E but I never hit that, I was specifically using copy + Paste keystrokes

Met1
Legend
April 6, 2022

Try swapping preview mode - ctrl-E