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Participating Frequently
February 13, 2020
Answered

What do the Illustrator cursor symbols mean?

  • February 13, 2020
  • 12 replies
  • 8366 views

I am having trouble finding a guide to the cursor symbols in Illustrator. By this I mean the hover symbol that the cursor turns into when over different sections of the artboard. I have had a lot of trouble with the Text Tool, and I need to know what the cursor symbols mean but I can't find any guidance on this. Is there a guide or cheat sheet somewhere? Perhaps similar to a keyboard shortcut guide?

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Correct answer Ton Frederiks

12 replies

tromboniator
Community Expert
February 14, 2020

Is it this, which appears upon clicking the red overset text annotation?

If so, clicking and dragging will create a new text box containing a continuation of the text.

 

Peter

Jacob Bugge
Community Expert
February 14, 2020

h,

 

While waiting for the cursor symbols sheet or the end of days, whichever occurs first, you may take photos of the troublesome ones and post those instead of screenshots, maybe collecting them in one image (you can use Clipping Masks).

 

 

Ton Frederiks
Ton FrederiksCorrect answer
Community Expert
February 14, 2020

Monika Gause
Community Expert
February 14, 2020

With your dscriptions nobody will be able to help you.

So if you are not able to take screenshots: please draw the cursors.

Please describe step by step what exactly you're doing and what exactly is happening. And again: screenshots help.

 

Also: did you read the documentation?

 

Obviously there is no cheat sheet. So why not try and create that yourself?

 

 

[ moved to the end of the thread by moderator ]

hnichollAuthor
Participating Frequently
February 14, 2020

This is one of them pixxxel_schubser but not the ones that are giving me difficulty. It is a little black pointer with tiny tiny lines that make up a paragraph. What's odd is that when I seach 'Illustrator text symbols' through Google, it gives me all the symbols contained in glyphs and fonts, not the hover cursor symbols/images that I see when I'm trying to work with the Text tool in Illustrator. (I likely have my search terms incorrect?)

 

Someone else who posted here is also right: I am a student, trying to learn Illustrator's tools, and it's daunting. A cheat sheet of the hover symbols/images such as the one that pixxxel_schubser just posted would be super helpful. When I click with my mouse with the wrong hover symbol engaged, the text tool does crazy things, so I need to know what those hover symbols are. I'm using Ctrl Z constantly.

pixxxelschubser
Community Expert
February 14, 2020

@hnicholl,

did you read Monika's post on page 2?

 

(And please - use only the answer button directly below the original post. Otherwise this thread will "unreadable" because of nested nested answers inbetween.)

Jacob Bugge
Community Expert
February 14, 2020

h,

 

I believe this is an obvious case for a feature request with a link to it here and a link back to this thread,

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/

 

If they are really troublesome a better term may be curser symbols.

 

Monika Gause
Community Expert
February 13, 2020

Make new text object: either click or click and drag

 

Put text inside the shape

 

Put text on the path, looks like so:

 

Icons look different, but this is how it works: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/creating-text.html

pixxxelschubser
Community Expert
February 13, 2020

@hnicholl wrote:

"… a little black pointer with a squiggle …"

 

And this is the Width Tool

pixxxelschubser
Community Expert
February 13, 2020

@hnicholl wrote:

"… a little black pointer with paragraph text …"

 

Do you mean the "Touch-Type-Textwerkzeug"? (German name)

Touch Type Tool

chanaart
Community Expert
February 14, 2020

Q
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*From my CLOUD to YOURS*

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[image: --]

Chana
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[ private informations removed by moderator ]

pixxxelschubser
Community Expert
February 14, 2020

@chanaart,

Your post seems incomplete?

 

What did you want to show us?

 

Mario Arizmendi
Brainiac
February 13, 2020