Participant

Answered

Illustrator CC 2017 Spacebar and Tools Not Working

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
January 3, 2017
5 replies
3516 views

I'm a long time and uninterrupted user —since Illustrator 88 and Photoshop 2.0 in the late '80s .

I first noticed these issues after Adobe CS6. The most noticeable is the inability to select objects, in Photoshop the Marquee Tool turns into the Move Tool upon clicking (and not upon Cmd+click as usual), in Illustrator the spacebar refuses to bring up the Hand Tool, Space+Cmd no longer brings up +zoom. Same problem with Space+Cmd+Opt for -zoom. Sometimes the Selection Tool (v) simply won't select an element (I make sure Show Edges and Bounding Box is turned on), at other instances when approaching anchor points the cursor will change from Rotate to Scale erratically, making it impossible to perform either tasks.

To clarify, I've observed this behavior:

- In Illustrator and Photoshop (from CS up).

- Using a 2010 iMac 27" i7; 2011 iMac 27" i7; 2013 MacBok Air 11" i5 and iMac 27" i7 5K (all well-maintained, plenty of RAM and space)

- Using a variety of OS versions, including the latest Sierra 10.12.2

- Using a Wacon Intuos Pro; Wacom Intuos Pro Wireless (always latest Drivers); wired mouse; Magic Mose 2 and trackpad

- Running Illustrator or Photoshop alone (killed other apps and processes), after a clean reboot with only mouse and keyboard plugged into USBs

- Running offline and online. At home and behind FireWalls in enterprise environment.

- opening old files, legacy and making/saving new files (CMYK; RGB; Greyscale);

- running 32 and 64bits

- running GPU Performance on and off

In all instances the same behavior appears in some form or another. Sometimes, especially in Photoshop, Cmd+Tab to the Finder and back to the application solves the Selection Tool issue, but its a spotty solution.

I keep my machines to the bare minimum. No cute little apps, no extensions, no obscure plug-ins, no bootleg. I have the Adobe CC suite and Apple's native apps. I use Safari mostly, without extensions (Chrome sporadically for testing).

I've been struggling with the for a couple of years and for some reason attributed it to an incompatibility between the software and the Wacom tablet... I kept waiting for that update which would fix it all. However today my spacebar stoped working completely (after the latest Wacom software update) and I can no longer adapt my workflow... I hope I'm being more productive writing this —the spacebar works fine with the Type Tool, as a space, however I went ahead and tested with a second keyboard, mouse, Wacom, all on, all off... you name it

This setup is:

- iMac (Retina 5K, 27", Late 2015); 4GHz Intel i7; 16 GB DDR3; AMD Radeon R9 M390 2MB

- MacOS Sierra 10.12.1

- Wacom driver 6.3.19-10 (Problem is also present with wired and Magic Mouse)

If anyone is having these issues OR has any incline on how to address them I'll be very grateful.

thanks!
/r

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer BigUp!

I just had this issue where the spacebar didn't work for the hand or zoom tool. For me it was a sleep issue and putting the computer to sleep, and waking it after a couple seconds resolved the issue. (switching out of illustrator to another app before sleeping may resolve it too)

A

Alastair L

Inspiring

Having similar issue with AI 2023!! Apcebar shortcut simply not working at all. Restarting AI doesn't help. About to restart mac, since that ixed a a different zoom issue (tool didn't work at all,even when selescted in tool palette) in Photoshop 2023 yesterdaty!

B

BigUp!Correct answer

Participant

I just had this issue where the spacebar didn't work for the hand or zoom tool. For me it was a sleep issue and putting the computer to sleep, and waking it after a couple seconds resolved the issue. (switching out of illustrator to another app before sleeping may resolve it too)

C

Celia34210

Participant

Hi! Wondering if you were able to fix this issue? I have very nearly the same set up as you. I found that using Command-Spacebar will allow the hand tool to pop up and then I can move individual objects no problem. Siri, however, does mind as this is her shortcut, as well. Even with her interference, the shortcut will work this way for me.... your mileage may vary... Would like to know if anyone else is having the same combination of problems.... Thanks!

R

R Marquardt

Participant

Turning the Siri keyboard shortcut off entirely (which I had had set to fn-space) resolved the issue for me in Illustrator and Photoshop.

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @R Marquardt,

Glad to hear that you were able to resolve the problem. Feel free to reach out if you need further assistance in the future. We'd be happy to help.

Thanks,

Anubhav

K

Ken3420

Participant

I also have been having problems with my spacebar. I'm not a developer but since CC became cloud based I thought it might have something to do with web security. Anyway here is my fix. Turn off web threat shield. You may not have Webroot but other internet security programs may be doing the same thing. There may be more elegant solutions by allowing CC through or something but this is the root of the problem - at least for me.

Edit: Disregard all that. I jumped the gun. I had to turn off Realtime Shield which basically turns off your anti virus but It's another idea.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Try a different Wacom driver. Not necessarily the latest one.

RenatoCastilhoAuthor

Participant

Thanks Monika.

This has been a chronic issue for a while... last night MacOS was auto-updated (Sierra 10.12.02) and this morning Illustrator is working like a charm (latest Wacom driver or Magic Mouse).

I doubt the update was the fix, since the problem has been replicated under so many variables... I'm starting to think the fix might've spawned from a system purge after the update. Maybe the issues are exacerbated over time as logging files accrue? Not sure.

Let's wait and see

/r

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Apple has change stuff for mouse and whatever input devices, but they told no one what exactly they changed.

Since they have added this weird touch panel in Macbooks they also must have added support for it in the system. This might or might not affect system wide touch support and therefore Wacom might collide with it as well. The problem is that it seems to be an issue to get any information out of Apple.

And this is without assuming that Apple themselves don't know what they're doing.

You can read about it in the After Effects forum:

Re: Sierra Magic Mouse Scrolling / Zoom Issue

And just to make this clear: I'm not an Adobe employee. This is my personal point of view as an Apple user for more than 25 years.

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