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9

Illustrator randomly selects unrelated objects

Explorer ,
Feb 05, 2013 Feb 05, 2013

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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.

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correct answers 3 Correct answers

New Here , Aug 04, 2017 Aug 04, 2017

Select All (Command+A) ---> click on random object ---> then click on random area outside the artboard

Did it work for you?

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New Here , Sep 08, 2022 Sep 08, 2022

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 EVERYT

...

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New Here , Aug 18, 2023 Aug 18, 2023

OMG it was the guides!!! I had like 20 invisible ones causing problems. You saved me so much time and frustration.

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Adobe
replies 132 Replies 132
New Here ,
Oct 25, 2022 Oct 25, 2022

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

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Participant ,
Jan 09, 2023 Jan 09, 2023

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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.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 11, 2023 Jan 11, 2023

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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.

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Explorer ,
Feb 15, 2023 Feb 15, 2023

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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 šŸ™‚

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Engaged ,
May 17, 2023 May 17, 2023

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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. šŸ˜‰ 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.

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Participant ,
Nov 28, 2023 Nov 28, 2023

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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.

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Community Expert ,
Nov 29, 2023 Nov 29, 2023

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

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Participant ,
Nov 29, 2023 Nov 29, 2023

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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.

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