Releasing All Clipping Masks?

[bryanoooo]

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

[Bernd Alheit]

Try the forum for Illustrator.

[Sara_Forsberg]

[discussion moved to Illustrator forum]

[Theresa J · Accepted solution]

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.

[gabrielc56558026]

Thank you SO MUCH!

[natural_project5C1F]

you're awesome

thank you so much.

[elmir.latifov]

You just saved my life. So simple and genius solve

[craigsrussell]

Very handy thanks

[defaultg3tqhmezv7qj]

so incredibly helpful, thanks!

[mikaoru]

These saved me so much time! Thank you so much!

[rohit_gaikwad]

Thanks

[WorkEmail]

You're Awesome! Thanks..

[Shabnam30500336slrk]

wow! Thank you so much! it was so easy and since i have to work with this kind of artworks evry day it saved alot of time for me. thank you so much

[aliii33990479d0b8]

You legend thank you

[DJimages_BiZ]

OMG THANK YOU!!!!!!

[FieryPantone]

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 ;-}

[nickgripton · Accepted solution]

Select everything CTL+A

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

[TVHung]

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

[Kanchan25429286oxq1]

OMGGGGG!!! THANKSSSSSSSSSS 

[SteveCrookJr]

This continues to work. "Solution" above no longer works.

Thank you!

[Bas0D45]

And... do you have the same magic for UNGROUP ALL?

[elizabeths61297746]

Hmm. This does not seem to work in Ai 28.5

[KaraKS]

7 years after this answer was posted and @nickgripton 's trick still works! Thank  you!!!!!

[Umar5EB8]

Still works with Illustrator 2025.

[Eliyah Gevalt]

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?)