Hand tool not working. Cannot delete preferences.

[Document Geek]

Normally, when I'm working with text and need to temporariliy switch to the Hand tool, I simply hold down the Option key, and my cursor switches to the hand tool. Not so today. It switches to the Select tool, and instead pf panning, my objects are dragged. Even if I switch to the hand tool by actually clicking on it in the toolbar, the Select tool still gets activated upon clicking and dragging.

Even if I am actively working with text and try to highlight some text by clicking and dragging across it, instead, the Select tool is activated and my text frame is moved.

I tried deleting my preferenes using the longstanding Shift + Control + Option + Command method upon restarting. But I don't get the "Would you like to reset your preferences?" dialog box. So I tried deleting them manually. I found the "InDesign SavedData" file, ut that same folder does not have the "InDesign Defaults" file.

I just installed the latest update from today, and that still didn't solve the problem. The "InDesign Defaults" file is still missing, and I still cannot reset the preferences using the keyboard shortcut.

My InDesign is basically unusable at this point. Help please!

I am on InDesign 16.2.1 and Mac os 10.15.7.

[Laubender]

Hi Document Geek,

if you want to reset the "preferences", look into this helpX page where the file/folder paths for the two Version 16.0 folders are listed for preferences and caches:

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/user-guide.html/indesign/using/setting-preferences.ug.html#restore_...

Removing them should do the job.

Hm. Other things to consider:

Backup all other Version xx.0 folders for all other installed InDesign versions and also hide them before installing a fresh InDesign 2021 version on your machine so that the install mechanism cannot access preferences from older installations.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Document Geek]

Thanks for that, Uwe. It just randomly started working again, before I even had a chance to review the URL in your post. 

[Peter Spier]

The default temporary key for the hand tool is the spacebar...

[Bill Silbert]

The default temporary key for the hand tool when text is selected with the text tool is the option key on a Mac or the Alt key on a PC. When no text is selected or if a text frame is selected with a selection tool but no text is active then the spacebar is the temporary key for the hand tool.