Illustrator randomly selects unrelated objects

[cmcmorrow]

About once  a day, when I click on an object with the direct selection tool, the bounding box will be way larger than it should, implying another object on another artboard is included in the selection.

This happens when the object I am selecting is NOT grouped with anything else. Moreover, is seems buggy because the mystery object doesnt have its "edges" visible the way it would if it were legitimately selected.

I can deselect all, but then anything I click on, the selection's bounding box is expanded to include the mystery object. The only way I have found to deal with it is to drag a corner of the bounding box, then undo, and then click off again. Then Voila! I am able to select my object (or any other) without the mystery selection happening.

I use clipping masks a lot, as well as many artboards, and have wondered if it's related to this, as the mystery objects are sometimes masked images, and often on another artboard. However, the mystery objects are not always masked.

Anyone else having this weird problem??

I had it with CS5, and hoped it would go away with CS6, but it has not.

[Met1]

This doesn't solve the problem, nor does the posted "correct answer".

My general solution is just to ignore it: I've yet to make a change to the intended selection and have anything else that is "pretend grouped" change as well... it's still annoying though!

[Doug A Roberts]

I experienced this for the first time in years yesterday immediately after adding a library item to the document.

[vctr]

August 27, 2021 and this bug still not solved. 

[Chris White at Raynors]

Hey everyone,

You're probably only reading this because you're tearing your hair out with frustration. I hope I can help a little.

I've just had an an instance of what looks like this problem, specifically to do with text boxes. I am very aware that there may be more than one problem which all looks like the same thing so it may not apply to your particular case, but anyway, this is what I found... 

Issue:

I was using around 30 or 40 panels of text (NOT area type) on a simple single layer artwork with no guides.

Every time I selected one of two panels of text on the left of the document, a way oversize text box would pop up, extending to the right.

Once deselected, I tried clicking around in the area of the big phantom box, but nothing happened.

Then I found that a single line of text in one of the panels over to the right seemed to be activating it. 

After I deleted the line of text the problem persisted - it turned out there was a small 'live' area, linked to the box to the left but completely invisible.

When you moved the 'source' text panel, the live patch went with it, and vice versa.

Fix:

It turned out that the text I had in the problematic panels had been pasted in from an email.

On copying and pasting the text in the panel into a raw text editor, Is aw what looked like a long chains of spaces after some of the lines of text. 

Sure enough, where these line of spcaes would have ended on the Illustrator file corresponded to where the 'live' spot was. There were tiny control characters embedded in the linebreaks.

Deleting the two panels and manually rekeying the text into a new panel solved the issue. 

Diagnosis:

This was caused, I believe, by control characters from the email text formatting creeping into the text strings unnoticed and generating a rogue end-of-line linking character in Illustrator. Every time I clicked on it the end of one of these long invisible lines of text, it linked back to the original text, but could itself be seen when selected. You have to get rid of the whole text panel and start again.

Obviously, this doesn't apply to instances that don't involve text boxes, but it does read like quite a few of the other posts in this chain, which makes me think there may be more than one problem here.

Just because one thing is wrong, it doesn't mean that two things aren't wrong.

I hope this helps.

[BigMacca · Accepted solution]

I have also just had this issue in what appears now to be an 8-year-old issue.

(I'm no Illustrator expert btw).

I solved it... through luck.

In my case, the box was linked (somehow) to a 2-letter text box which I had moved to another layer and then hidden. Somehow this 'shadow' from the text box was left behind. I didn't see a clipping mask in the layers box. When I selected it (or more normally I selected 'off' a different object) this item was left behind.

My suggestion is therefore: 

Select EVERYTHING - make everything visible and unlocked.

You may, like me, see that this phantom box is linked to a 'known' object. 

Which I simply deleted.

It has worked (for now!?).

[nicolasr90588425]

October 25, 2022. I work all day every day on Ai. This bug has been here 9 years. How is that even possible?

[G_Man]

It sure bugs the HELL out of me in 2025. I've seen this problem for several years now. 

[Benji-11]

I still have this problem and it kills my time. At times I have to live with it because whatever I do the bug is there forever. It is hard to describe some bugs and it is hard to find a related topic on the internet because some websites worked so hard on their SEO, that Google brings many unrelated pages. Please fix this problem. I have had this problem since 2008 and we are in 2023.

[Doug A Roberts]

For what it's worth, I haven't experienced this bug in perhaps five years, just to give an idea of how (relatively) hard it might be to pin down and fix. And of course I could never consistently trigger it.

[G_Man]

Agreed. Difficult to describe as it makes no sense to google or folk lucky enough not to have experienced it. 

[Anubhav M]

Hello @G_Man,

I'm sorry to hear you're having the same trouble with Illustrator. Would you mind confirming the exact version of the OS/Illustrator, if you're using a tablet/pen, your screen resolution/scaling and a small screen recording of your workflow and the problem, so I can try and replicate this on my end?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

[G_Man]

Hi Anubhav,

Thanks for your message. I certainly would be happy to do that when it happens next time. 

Kind regards,

Gary. 

[Eliyah Gevalt]

it is still happening althou less, but in all the versions, i have been
working in Adobe for years, we always have the most updated versions, no
pen or tablet, desktop pc and also on MAcs same thing was happening and it
was at a different work place in a different location, so it can't related
to some personal bug on my computer or smtm


--

Eliyah Feldman
Graphic Design and Art

[Anshul_Saini]

Hi @Eliyah Gevalt,

Thanks for providing those details. It sounds like the issue has been consistent across different setups. To help narrow things down, could you please share the exact versions of Illustrator and the operating systems you’re using? Additionally, if possible, could you provide a screen recording demonstrating the issue along with a sample file when it occurs? This will help us share it with the product team for further investigation.

We’ll take a closer look to help resolve this as efficiently as possible.

Best,

Anshul Saini

[Eliyah Gevalt]

Hi.

I have been struggling with this for years. When i group select a few items (drag select) a random item will get selected.

I used to solve it by scaling the selected items then doing undo, after which the issues seemed to resolve.

Today it happened again and i discovered that the "random" item was actually grouped with a guide and the guides were hidden but still were selected being in the range of the drag selection action.

The guides behaving like objects is a whole separate issue that makes no sense. But all ths time this might have been the issue. (I revealed the guides ungrouped them and deleted, and now all is fine).

Now i see a reason at lest, however the fact that guides (in group or out) get selected while they are hidden doesn't make any sense and seems like an actual bug, besides all the above lack of usability.

Good luck to us all 🙂

[ericc19576445]

It's 2023. 10 years later. This has never improved. Seems like the bounding box issues are getting worse. Random artifacts all the time that after checking every single f*cking layer proves to not exist. I hate that I have to use Illustrator for work everyday. Unreliable, unpredictable, and frankly unneccessarily stressful.

I am a pro user. 20 year XP, so I'm not doing it wrong. 😉 Adobe just has terrible QC for windows CC suites. I could rant for hours on what's always been broken and how Adobe doesn't care in the slightest.

[troyjack]

This has been happening to me consistently for more than a decade... on whatever the latest version is/was at the time. On several different Macs at more than one workplace. The workaround I've always used is SELECT ALL and then DESELECT ALL, and all is well until it happens again. In the latest version, it seems to be happening more than ever. I'm amazed this still hasn't been addressed. It has probably happened today more times than I can count on my hands.

[Doug A Roberts]

When you say that this is happening consistently, does that mean you can consistently reproduce it? If so, what are the steps?

[troyjack]

Unfortunately no. I move fast in my workflow, so it's difficult to retrace my steps when I'm on the go. It's become second-nature to do the SELECT ALL trick throughout the day (the Command and A keys on my keyboard are literally worn out). Though I feel like, for the most part, it happens when I return to the main artboard from working in isolation mode and/or editing text within a group and/or text appearance attributes (strokes, fills, etc.) from within a group. When I exit iso mode there will be a random phantom bounding box near unrelated objects somewhere else on the artboard.

[RC4WD]

Been dealing with this issues for over 10 years. Hoping one day it gets  fixed.

[Eliyah Gevalt]

it's ridiculous


--

Eliyah Feldman
Graphic Design and Art

[G_Man]

Yup. Happened to me again yesterday. Very annoying. 

[Anubhav M]

Hello @G_Man,

Could you please share some more details, like the exact version of the OS/Illustrator, a public link to a sample file after uploading it to Dropbox/Google Drive/etc., and a screen recording of the problem (https://adobe.ly/4coBO4h) so we can investigate this further.

Note: While sharing the file, kindly make the link public and enable the option to save a copy/download (if any) under the link settings.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

[G_Man]

Good morning Anubhav, 

Thanks for your message. I'm not able at this timr yto provide a vieo. I can only give the following details.

I have just updated Illustrtaor to 29.4 today - so the version that I last had this isue was one previous to 29.4. 

My OS is Windows 10 Pro version 10.0.19045 Build 19045.

Intel Core i9-10900KF CPU @3.7GHZ.

32GB RAM.

NVIDIA Quadro P2200.

I will record it next time it happens. 

Thanks. 

[Eliyah Gevalt]

this issue was present in ALL versions since i had started using the
programm which was a long time ago. as you can see a lot of others have
been experiencing it. ii used to work on Mac and now i work on pc and it's
the same.

--

Eliyah Feldman
Graphic Design and Art