Releasing All Clipping Masks?

Forum|Forum|10 years ago
April 29, 2015
6 replies
123288 views

Hi Everyone....Please Help Me!

I am regularly required to work with old pdf files for my company, which I have to open in Illustrator to amend and update (we don't have access to the original .ai files).

Whenever I start to work on these files I have to spend ages just unconnecting the elements of the artwork, usually by right clicking and choosing "release clipping mask"

Is there a way to just disconnect everything when you open up an old pdf document in Illustrator?

Tá mo chroi bhríste

(it has my heart broken - in Irish!)

Kind Regards to all

Bryan

Correct answer nickgripton

Select everything CTL+A

then CTL+ALT+7 which will release all clipping masks

Eliyah Gevalt

Participating Frequently

1. good question, i habeen strugling with this for years.

2. there doesn't seem to be a good solution.

both answers here don't really do the job - deliting all of them is not bad i guess, hiwever all the stuff stays either grouped or still needs the "realease clipping maks" applied to it in order to work with it normaly. by the way the better way to do it is selec-object-clipping masks

and the shrortcut provided by Nick seems to just release the separate standing ones, so in the case with the old pdfs it doesnt really help because it only releases the main one and there still dozens of them left within each other (by the way maybe there's a technichal reason for it but why???!!! does it need to be like that?)

elizabeths61297746

Inspiring

This!! This worked for me. Thank you, the Select>Object>Clipping masks, and then I went to Object>Clipping Mask> Release. Worked much better. Nick's shortcut didn't work for me.

nickgriptonCorrect answer

Inspiring

Select everything CTL+A

then CTL+ALT+7 which will release all clipping masks

TVHung

Participant

Thank you so much! You save my entire morning with this simple short curt!

F

FieryPantone

Legend

thanks for posting your heartbreaking experience – it prompted Theresa's answer, which saves me from breaking my own heart over exactly the same problem :-}

by the way, and hope I'm not teaching my grandmother to suck eggs … after deleting all the clipping masks, my next step is to open the Layers pallette and ungroup each left-over Clipping group ;-}

Theresa J

Community Expert

First, set your fill and stroke both to none. Make sure all of the layers, and the art is unlocked. Then go to Select>Same>Fill & Stroke. Clipping masks usually don't have a fill and stroke, so this should select all of them. Then you can just hit the delete key to remove and release everything.