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Participant
February 9, 2013
Answered

Smart Guides not working (grayed out).

  • February 9, 2013
  • 8 replies
  • 141426 views

I too am having problems with the 'Smart Guides' option being grayed out in the 'View' - 'Grids and Guides' column. I've replaced the preferences, checked all the appropriate boxes, yet nothing I do works. Additionally, the 'Smart Guides' did work for some time. However, for reason(s) I'm unaware of, they just stopped showing up. I'm stumped. Any suggestions?

Correct answer Pixeltender

^ the answer in that link is to turn off "snap to document grid"

8 replies

Participating Frequently
February 9, 2023

My Smart Guides were doing the same thing and I turned my Snap to Document Grids off and it fixed it. 

Participant
January 10, 2022

It may not surprise anyone to know, this problem still persists in 2022, I was happily working in InDesign 17.0.1 x64 and realised the Smart Guides weren't so smart anymore.

 

I'd like to thank Jongware for posting the article with the answer to this puzzling dilema along with other useful content in the same article.

 

Happy designing in 2022 All

🙂

tehw13149666
Participant
March 21, 2021

i've had this problem with the most recent version with indesign (not sure about other programmes). as the article stated, smart guides is dependent on another feature. in indesign, it's dependent on 'snap to document grid'. it needs to be unchecked for it to work,

Participant
February 12, 2020

View --> grid& guide -->  Snap to Document Gride 

Participant
February 12, 2013

Thanks Jongware, you saved my day! I had by mistake checked the "Snap to Document Grid" feature under View > Grids & Guides. This made the Smart Guides option inaccessible. I don't really see why it necessarily should, though.

Participant
April 3, 2013

The problem of "Snap to Smart Objects" is greyed out has been resolved with the above solution. Thanks.

Tip: Unselect "snap to document grid" as this featured will grey out and prevent the use of "Snap to Smart Objects"

Jongware
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 12, 2013
October 4, 2017

Very helpful thank you!

Participant
February 12, 2013

I'm having exactly the same problem. I run Win 7 64 Bit and InDesign 8.0.1

Peter Spier
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 12, 2013

I've branched your question out of the Replace Your Prefs thread into one of its own and changed the title so more people will see it. I'm not able to make the menu item go gray here, and I'm going to presume that you followed the instructions in the other thread for trashing the prefs, so I'm not going to suggest you do that again, at least not yet.

It would help if we know your OS and version of ID (including the update patch applied).

Participant
September 17, 2024

Worked, thank you!