Issue: Object dimensions become huge after reopening a file, affecting tools and workflow

[GUILHERME34091322erss]

Hi everyone,

I’m experiencing a serious issue in Illustrator.

When I create a new document, everything works fine: objects display at the correct size on the artboard, and their dimensions in the Properties/Transform panel are accurate.

But after I save the file, close Illustrator, and reopen the same document, the objects still look visually correct on the artboard. However, in the Properties/Transform panel their dimensions suddenly become extremely large.

The problem is that once this happens, all Illustrator tools (transform, align, distribute, scaling, etc.) start following these incorrect giant dimensions, which makes it impossible to keep working normally in the same file. It also affects zoom and scroll performance, which become very slow or freeze.

So visually the artwork looks right, but Illustrator is treating it as if it were scaled to enormous values.

Has anyone else faced this? Could it be a units/scale mismatch or a known bug in how Illustrator handles saved files? Any workaround or fix would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[Sean Dicken]

Here's my corruput illustrator file- there are 58 artboards in there at 550576.7169px x 309699.4033px each (they used to be 1920x1080)

[Ton Frederiks]

That is a very good (maybe I should say bad) example of the corrupted dimensions problem. Thanks Sean!

[Sean Dicken]

I've had this happen in a few files I'm working with now (in v29.7.1, MacOS). I've got a workspace with fifty eight 1920px x 1080px artboards on it (building out storyboards for a series of After Effects videos). When the scale gets corrupted each artboard increases 550576.7169px x 309699.4033px. My fonts which were previously around 54pt, are now showing up at 14,337.93pt. I can't just copy each artboard and paste into a new document because each of my artboards is now much larger than the maximum canvas bounds.

THANKFULLY, the Overlord plugin (I'm on v1.26) doesn't seem to notice an issue, because I'm still able to 'Push Selection to AE' and the contents of the Artboards arrive in AE at the proper pixel dimensions.

[Makerman111111]

Same thing happening here. Everytime I save the document it gets larger dimensionally. 

[reinko]

Workaround that may help someone recover some of their work:
I opened the corrupt AI file in Acrobat, saved it as an optimized PDF, and reopened in Illustrator. It said there was a problem with the size and it could open it with 'Honor scale on PDF import' to which I said yes. That almost worked (the width of my content was now 1940px instead of 1920px). Which I was able to scale to the correct size (scaling from the corrupt document to 0,20796319% doesn't work, the text doesn't scale correctly). 

Hope this helps someone! 

[caro_mm]

@reinko thank you for the tip! At this instance I do not know why this version it had not been put off.. that we can all go back to the previous working versions, and not have this inmmese risk of getting files corrupt and loosing days and days of work. I have this fear of loosing all, if I save, if I do more than 3 artworks, if artworks are different in sizes, things I have done so easily before this version..., if I change the units.. by the way, before, even if my UNITS were lets say in milimeters, I still could transform dimensions of an element and type  down "400pt" and it let me, now if the UNITS is in cm, all I type, even if I put "400 pt" is taken as "CM" (nos doing the correspondent mathematics ruling, 400 px are not 400 cm!!) for me there is a HUGE bug with UNITS / ARTWORKS / VIEW . Is a bummer, and I wish there was more feedback from the team, not us user telling each other how to deal with corrupt unreliable files....  and make crazy maniouvres to avoid loosing so much hours of work and delaying deadlines... I know all the team is under a lot of  preassure, but Adobe policies are so strict if you do not pay in terms, on the usage of the apps that is funny they are so loose when we can not use an app we all pay so much for. Or I speak for myself, it is a rather expensive suit for me. I write this with respect for the programmers,  mess can happen all ok, is more Adobe should not charge for a service is not giving , the least! and we should be able to get a access to a proper runnig version.

[Angelic_Glimpse0889]

Hi, I am having the same issue. It's disappointing to read this entire thread and have nobody from Adobe offer a solution.

Please can somebody from Adobe post a clear solution to this problem. I can't keep spending time resizing entire projects due to this software glitch.

Many thanks.

[Old Charles]

It's disappointing to see all the Adobe product being more and more infested with ads, templates for sale, offers, tutorials, promotional video, and finally AI pushed everywhere... but then doing almost nothing to practically improve their producs or solve problems. And then they wonder why so many are switching to other software.

As most of the people here, I work with Adobe products. It means, I pay my bills, including the Adobe subscription.
Now I have a HUGE deadline on monday that's literally going to be f*cked up because of a bug. I can't postpone it. It's for a municipality and has to be done for monday. Guess who will spend the damn weekend at the office redoing everything from scraps? I'm feeling frustrated.

[Leigh Anne300437800w6u]

We are having the same issue as well in our marketing department. It started yesterday. Would love a fix for this!

[Angelic_Glimpse0889]

Is there anyone from Adobe that can get back to us about this problem. It's affecting the daily operation of our studio. Thanks.

[caroline_9508]

Agreed. This is a problem for my company too. We discovered it this week. It is negatively impacting our operations and deadlines. Is this bug being addressed? When will there be an update?

[Angelic_Glimpse0889]

FYI to this board, in the absence of anyone from Adobe advising on what to do, I uninstalled v29.8 and went back to v29.7.1 and also setiched off auto-install.

When I now save documents, close and re-open they stay in the original size. Fingers crossed this works until they figure out the fix forv 29.8!

[Sean Dicken]

I never upgraded from v29.7.1 (MacOS, Apple Silicon), and I'm currently having the problem.

[AE-FTW]

Just had a mac in our studio start doing this.
Hard to believe the problem is not being sorted or status updates from Adobe being reported here.
Simple files or complicated multi-artboard documents are being destroyed, having massive impacts on timelines.

Often the problem won't be discovered for days or will remain a hidden liability, since the issue is discovered the next time the document is opened.

We're reinstalling an old Illustrator and rebuilding all the documents we think have been affected. Hopefully this workstation will be a viable for Illustrator again - though reports seem varied.

What a mess.

[Old Charles]

I'm having the same issue here.

I'm developing a signage system for a municipality and I have a deadline on this monday. I've redone the whole thing once already just to discover that the bug occurred again. I'll try to rollback but still I will have to spend the damn weekend at work to redo what I've already done twice.
I can't even reimport the artboards on a new document because they are so huge they messed up everything.

From 25cm to 977cm. I just want to scream.

[reinko]

Hi, don't know if this is helpful for you, but using this workaround through Acrobat was helpful for me (my art was all on one artboard; your job sounds like it probable has many. 

›› I opened the corrupt AI file in Acrobat, saved it as an optimized PDF, and reopened in Illustrator. It said there was a problem with the size and it could open it with 'Honor scale on PDF import' to which I said yes. That almost worked (the width of my content was now 1940px instead of 1920px). Which I was able to scale to the correct size (scaling from the corrupt document to 0,20796319% doesn't work, the text doesn't scale correctly). 

[Old Charles]

Thank you, I'll try that.
However, forgot to mention, I'm currently using Illustrator 29.8 and I'm now removing it to install an older version. I read this issue hapens on 29.7.1 too so might go even further backward...

I'm just sad and angry... this issue just created me a lot of troubles...

[gin3d]

you can try to scale artwork down in affected document and then paste in new document. pasted artwork can't be bigger then pasteboard (area where artboards are arranged). 

[Hunter Pack Health · Accepted solution]

This works. I created a new blank doc in the same (undamaged) dimensions then copied and pasted all layers (remember lays turned on) into the new doc. Saved. Deleted damaged doc. Renamed file. Imported to Ae and everything was just as it had been.

Please note my Ai projects were simple with fewer than six layers. Complex projects may not fare as well.

Good luck!

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi everyone,

Thanks a lot for sharing all the details, files, and recordings here. Our team has been able to narrow down the cause of this issue and we are actively working on a fix. We expect to have this resolved early next week with the upcoming release. 
We'll keep you posted once the fix is available. In the meantime, please continue to share any observations you notice, as it helps us validate our progress.

Appreciate your patience and support.
Abhishek

[AE-FTW]

@Abhishek Rao can you give us any indication when the next release is scheduled?
Is there any way to minimise exposure to the current issue?
Thanks,
AE

[Sean Dicken]

The point is moot now since there's an actual update, but last night I discovered that I could avoid the problem by always using Save As instead of save. Was able to make a noon deadline today without issue. I discovered that because I started Save As-ing every 30 minutes or so, so I wouldn't have to go back very far- none of the files were corrupted, until I tried opening one of them later and simply hitting Cmd+S to save... after many hours of work, that file was the first to have a problem.

[Hunter Pack Health]

Nice. Last minute changes by client further exacerbated by software instability. Inkscape is starting to look like less of a risk every day.

[illadiseno]

I'm Having the same issue, two files damaged so far. When is gonna be fixed? Now I don't want to open old files because i´m scared of losing them too. 😕  

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for your patience and for sharing detailed reports and files regarding the scaling issue in Illustrator.

The product team has rolled out a new release, Illustrator 29.8.1, which addresses this issue. The fix prevents any further occurrences of objects scaling incorrectly when reopening files.

Important note: Unfortunately, files that were already affected by this bug cannot be corrected. The update ensures that new and existing files going forward will behave correctly. To avoid any future issues, please update to 29.8.1 and continue your work in this version.

We understand this has caused significant disruption and truly appreciate your understanding and feedback. If you encounter any new issues after updating, please share them with us, so the team can continue monitoring and improving the experience.

Thanks again for your support!

Abhishek