Is there a way to confine selections to just the current artboard?

[gmaletic]

Is there a way to confine selections to only the current artboard?

Background: I have a document with several artboards. They're all duplicates of each other, with just slight variations. Because of this, they all share the same layers, but I want to be able to do operations like Magic Wand and Select All… but only affect the current board.

[ryan_edwards]

You can save the selection(s)... and easily access them later at the bottom of the 'Select' menu... you can 'edit selection'... if you wish to change later

....another would be to add a 'note' to the layers you want and possibly run a script that looks for a particular naote

[gmaletic]

Saving a selection is a useful technique, but not a superb solution in my case. I don't know ahead of time all of the different kinds of selections I want to perform. And even if I did, it's still cumbersome to, say, select all elements of a certain color, deselect the items that aren't on the current artboard, then save it. Not to mention, if I add new objects, my saved selections become useless.

[ryan_edwards]

Setting files up like this can be a pain, but it saves in the long run.

I know sometimes there just isn't time for it though... a faster way, quick & dirty... is just loosely group content in your document... when you 'double click' isolation mode will drill down to encompass the whole group... so if you have 3 objects or 333 objects its a nice way to dynamically zip around... and you can still get granular an isolate a single shape/object if you still need.

gmaletic  wrote

....still cumbersome to, say, select all elements of a certain color, deselect the items that aren't on the current artboard, then save it. Not to mention, if I add new objects, my saved selections become useless.

If you save selections and then add some more stuff to your file... I would just run that old selection that is saved... that's going to get all the old stuff... now shift+click the new stuff... save a new section named something similar...v2.  No need to make selections from scratch every time you add something... hope that helps out.

[John Mensinger]

I've always thought that was a key weakness in the implementation of Illustrator's multiple artboards. The application desperately needs a preference toggle to the effect of "Confine all Operations to Current Artboard."

Adobe Illustrator Feedback

[ryan_edwards]

um if you save selection it will remember the context of what artboard it was, etc... I see no weakness

[John Mensinger]

You can't save and recall a selection until you make it the first time. The weakness applies to that first time; can't use many of the Select menu commands without affecting all artboards.

[Kurt Gold · Accepted solution]

I agree with John and I think the basic principle is already there: It's called Isolation Mode.

It would be quite beneficial if that Isolation Mode could be applied at a "per artboard" level.

[atomicbus]

Illustrators an absolute donkey, they should have kept Freehand and developed that instead of buying out the competition and shutting them down.

[Monika Gause]

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@atomicbus  schrieb:

they should have kept Freehand and developed that instead of buying out the competition and shutting them down.

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FreeHand was dead before Adobe aquired Macromedia. https://losingfight.com/blog/2007/05/17/rip-freehand/ 

[atomicbus]

Very sad it was a great product. At least Affinity Designer kept a lot of the good ideas. Even Indesign seems to be inspired by Freehand in some areas. Paste inside for one which is an absolute Godsend.

[Monika Gause]

You are looking for Paste inside? 

Cut the objects that should be masked

Select the mask

Press Shift + D and Press it again.

Paste in Place.

[Monika Gause]

You could First select on on current artboard, then inverse selection and then lock selected object. After that do whatever selection you intended to do.

But that's indeed a clumsy workaround.