Random letters scattered all over artboard

[cmba]

I'm on Illustrator 27.7. I noticed unwanted letters randomly getting spilled all over my artboard. Like alphabet soup but without the soup. I can't click on them or edit them, as if they were locked items, but they don't show up in the Layers. But if I toggle visibility for certain layers, these unwanted letters will toggle with it. And if they actually happen to be in the artboard, they will show up in the export.

A temporary fix I do is to cut an entire layer and then paste in place, but that's pretty annoying.

[Monika Gause]

Are they part of a path text? or do they appear out of nowhere?

[cmba]

Out of nowhere. Sometimes my cursor responds to them as if they were locked objects

[Aamir31680242i279]

@cmba Try restarting, clearing clipboard, checking hidden layers, restarting workspace, updating and verifying plugins.

[Matthew031791]

Mine is doing the exact same thing, very sporadically, but I moved my artboards around slightly and they disappeared, it is extremely annoying though! I think this is definitely a glitch in the latest update.

[nicoleb93106625]

It is super annoying, but this worked for me as well!

[rachelt52238723]

Did you ever get a fix for this? The same thing just happened to me, and I'm trying to solve the issue. Help would be appreciated!

[rachelt52238723]

Somehow I just solved the issue just by clicking the text tool and then an auto prompt appeared. I pressed cancel and it went back to normal.

[LukaLu]

Does not work for me. Did you find another solution meanwhile maybe? Thanks.

[Mr.ConradConrad]

I selected everything, copied it all, opened a new doc, and pasted. The random letters did not come over to the new doc. 

Not ideal but everything seems okay. Luckily for me what I was working on was still roughs - I would be pretty of skeptical of doing this with anything that was fully polished.

[Anubhav M]

Hello @FernandaFerreiraPinto,

Sorry to hear about this experience. Would you mind sharing some more details, like the exact version of the OS/Illustrator, a sample file (https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/share-your-files-in-6-simple-steps/td-p/12967...), and a screen recording of the problem (https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/screen-record-an-issue-on-windows-amp-macos-f...), so we can investigate this further?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Anubhav

[photo-boutique]

This has happened to me; I have copied everything onto an new art board as above but they have now appeared in my new board so will have transfer everything again to a new art board 😱

boards look small when on open screen; with anchored letters that cannot be moved or deleted

[Anubhav M]

Hello @photo-boutique,

We understand that encountering technical issues can be frustrating. Would you mind sharing more details, like the exact version of the OS/Illustrator, details about your exact workflow, the location where you saved your file (internal/external/network drive or a cloud-synced folder like Google Drive/Dropbox/etc.), and a sample file (https://adobe.ly/3SQvfOo), so we can investigate this further?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Anubhav

[LukaLu]

Can't get rid of them. Constantly re-appearing. So annoying.

[Monika Gause]

Which version, which system?

Is this a new file or an old one?

Are there path text objects in it?

Did you already reset the preferences?

[FernandaFerreiraPinto]

same issue over here D:

[Lori22680309p95x]

 same thing happening here.  They still appear when exporting as well as copy and paste.  The letters are like comments above, alphabet soup, lower case random placement, unable to clear. 

[Anubhav M]

Hello @Lori22680309p95x, @FernandaFerreiraPinto,

Sorry to hear about this experience. Would you mind sharing some more details, like the exact version of the OS/Illustrator, system config (CPU/GPU/Memory), a sample file (https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/share-your-files-in-6-simple-steps/td-p/12967...), and a screen recording of the problem (https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/screen-record-an-issue-on-windows-amp-macos-f...), so we can investigate this further?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Anubhav

[Dylan Frost]

Same here but its taken from the logos I have layout - can't click or move

[ariadneremoundakis]

This just happened to me. Every letter from my whole document had become like confetti everywhere. I slightly moved my artboard and it went back to normal. Ai v28.0 on MacOS Monterey 12.6

[ariadneremoundakis]

This happened to me again, and did not go away after restarting the app or moving an artboard. Not only are letters everywhere but also shapes (the same set of shapes repeating).

[echow35195916]

Same here!

[Heather33660166cmcb]

I've had the same issue multiple times over different files (when I've aligned text to a path) and I have to go in, select the original path and if I select the colour of the text it seems to ping back to shape. I spoke to the live help about it and they said it was an issue with my file.

[Yana35254348f04z]

I just had the same alphabet soup issue. This happened after I was getting very frustrated with my type on path constatly disapearing and having to readjust. The solution is to find the original path the spilled letters belong to and delete it. This cleared my file from them.

[SYL22150620]

Select All and shift everything over a notch. It seemed to have solved the issue for me!