How to fix a crash and recover documents in Illustrator

[Om Nath Jha]

Experiencing crashes in Illustrator? Unable to recover documents that you were working on before the software crashed? Follow solutions in this help article that provides simple and popular troubleshooting steps for these issues.

If the solutions in the article do not help, we suggest trying a couple of other solutions described below. If you are not comfortable performing these yourself or need expert assistance, contact us using this link for our technical experts to assist you.

• Test Illustrator in Safe Mode

Booting the system in Safe Mode starts your computer after performing certain checks and preventing third party software/services from automatically loading or opening.

Based on your operating system, click the links below to know how to boot the system in a Safe Mode. 

macOS

Windows

If Illustrator works as expected in the Safe mode, then there is a conflict in the form of a third-party service, or application like antivirus, plugins, or web extensions that are in conflict with the application.

Look for applications are running in the background when Illustrator crashes and disable them one by one. This will help you identify the application causing the issue.

• Test Illustrator in Root Account (macOS) / Hidden Admin Account (Windows)

The Root Account/ Hidden Admin Account has unrestricted read and write privileges to all areas of the file system. Follow the steps shared in these links to log in to the Root account/ Hidden Admin account and launch Illustrator. 

Root Account – macOS  

Hidden Admin Account – Windows

If the application works as expected in these accounts, you are probably facing issues with the user account Please follow these steps to repair the permission of your user account and relaunch Illustrator.

We hope that your issue is resolved. However, if you need further assistance, please post your query on the community and we’ll be happy to help.