Scale tool crashes Illustrator

[michelle700806]

Anyone have issues when they double click on the scale tool in Illustrator and it totally freezes? I am still able to move the mouse around, but if I click on anything (save, file quit, direct select, pen tool, etc.), it won't do a thing and I have to force quit. I've restarted, uninstalled and reinstalled the app, everything...and it keeps happening. (Its been over a year now). I can grab the object and scale or still go into Object/Transform/scale, but just cannot double click directly on the scale tool. Very frustrating!

[Monika Gause]

Double clicking the scale tool opens Preferences > Guides & Grid. If you don't see the window, look for it. Perhaps it's on a recently disconneted monitor. You could press Esc to close that window.

[michelle700806]

Im confused....Double clicking the scale tool should open a window so I can enter a % to scale...not Guides and Grid..

My Illustrator app is only on my one computer, so no other monitors are open with preferences open.

[Monika Gause]

Sorry, German version here. Thought you were talking about the measure tool.

You could try and reset the preferences. Before you do that: when did you last restart the computer?

[michelle700806]

no problem!

I've had this problem for over a year...so I've restarted my computer many times. If that resets preferences automatically. But I've never gone in and and purposefully reset preferences.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

There are 2 methods to reset preferences. One is permanent, the other one can be reverted:

How to set preferences in Illustrator

[Ray Yorkshire]

The scale  box might be opening  properly but almost off screen

look around the edge for a very narrow sliver of it ,

then attempt to drag it back in

eg