Hand Tool and Space Bar (Hand tool stuck; space not working) Monterey and Creative Cloud InDesign

[pkazmercyk]

(I've placed this post under InDesign since it's the app I use most often, but it also happens in Illustrator)

• At random times (sometimes when I first launch InDesign CC or Illustrator CC and other times after I've been working in the app for a short while) two things occur:

• The cursor changes to the hand tool and/or I'm unable to type a space in any Adobe app. So, except for moving the document around with the hand tool, I'm completely unable to do anything. I can't use any of the tools to make image frames, text boxes, etc. AND I can't select any objects, nothing!

• The only way I can get use of any tools is to restart my iMac (a brand new Mac, so could be an OS issue (12.0.1.) Then, if I'm lucky I can use the tools for awhile, otherwise, I'm retsarting again and hoping for the best.

• I even went so far as to buy a new keyboard, but that hasn't made any difference.

As you can imagine, it's frustrating having to keep stopping midway through every project and restarting. ANY help would be very much appreciated.

[Joel Cherney]

It's been so long since I was a frequent macOS user that  I don't even remember what they are called, but I have observed over the years that these kinds of keyboard input problems can more often than not be resolved by quitting out of those always-running apps at the top right of the menu bar. If InDesign is the only thing running, do you still have these issues? I once had a very hard time with stray spaces inserted into my InDesign documents until I figured out that leaving my banking app open, of all things, was interefering with InDesign's access to the keyboard. 

[pkazmercyk]

Hi Joel. Thanks for the idea. I will give it a try and let you know if it works.

Paul

[Joel Cherney]

The heavy-handed version of that troubleshooting method in macOS (that I only remember after having slept on it) would be to make a brand-new user and try InDesign when logged in as that user. That way, you can isolate your install of InDesign from every single user-level customization one can make, including apps that run in the background at startup, custom keyboard shortcuts in other apps, and so on.

[Creamer Training]

Check your System Preferences > Accessibility > Keyboard settings and see if Enable Full Keyboard Access is turned on. 

[soonerchem]

I checked this and my keyboard is fully accessible. When I hit the space bar in InDesign my progress is stopped with this dialogue box. If I "save" the document closes.

 

[Creamer Training · Accepted solution]

Sorry I wasn't clear--did you turn off Enable Full Keyboard Access?

[soonerchem]

This is what I found when I opened System Prefs–Accessibility–Keyboard. I did not change the setting, I just closed System Prefs leaving it as I found it.

 

[soonerchem]

Having a similar problem in Photoshop. The text tool does not allow spacing between words. In other words, the space bar does not space. The space bar does not, however, bring up the dialong box in Photoshop as shown in my first message above.

Example: Nowisthetimeto

[BobLevine]

Then I suggest a post in the Photoshop forum would be more productive.

[Creamer Training]

So turn it off and see if the problem goes away. 

[soonerchem]

Yes, that seems to work. Sorry, I thought you were suggeting that the full keyboard should be checked under Accessibility. Thanks for the help.

[pkazmercyk]

Thank you David.

Turning off that setting seems to have solved the problem for me.

Regards,

Paul

[Izabelle25763935rac2]

I'm having the same problem and that didi not work for me