Selection Tool Won't Resize

[BittyEnd]

Illustrator was working fine for me all last week and I've never had a problem using the selection tool to grab and resize my objects but for some reason today my selection tool will only SELECT objects, not resize them.  Upon approaching the corner of an object, the black arrow remains but a small white square appears at the bottom right instead of the entire cursor turning into resizing/rotating arrows.  I tried restarting my computer to no avail.  It happens on objects I create as well as objects that I place in.  Any thoughts...?  Thank you!

[Jacob Bugge · Accepted solution]

Bitty,

View>Show Bounding Box (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+B).

[BittyEnd]

THANK YOU.  And thank you for not making a snide comment on my lack of knowledge on the topic -- I'm still taking classes!  You made my day

I would have been so frustrated trying to figure that out!

[Jacob Bugge]

You are welcome, Bitty.

The Bounding Box becoming hidden is a recurring issue that has hit many users, including many experienced ones. It may be switched inadvertedly by the user, but it may also be caused by corruption of the preferences in the aiprefs file, something that may happen when Illy is closed down.

There are many things you have to know and cannot Read in The Fine Manual, such as the unavailability of keyboard shortcuts starting with Alt/Option when Caps Lock is on.

Apart from that I may be curt and even obtuse, but I never make snide comments.

[chrisk16589681]

thanks! this happened to me, was driving me crazy, u never realize how important that little feature is, til you are under deadline, and cant figure out what happened or what you might have clicked by accident to change settings.

[raquells10392983]

I just had this problem. And you helped me resolve it. Thank you!!!

[Gavin at MRP]

Guess what, @BittyEnd — some of us who have been using Illustrator since it first came out still don't know everything about it. Don't feel bad, and I second your kudos to @Jacob Bugge for simply helping out, and not making you feel bad for asking. 

I just came here today to help a coworker figure out how to turn this off, and Jacob's short, concise answer did the trick!

[Jacob Bugge]

Gavin,

The Show Bounding Box thread lives: after only 3 posts in 2009, it was quite quiet until it took off in 2015 with at least one post every year.

As mentioned in 2018 here, and in some other threads over the years, it is rather sneaky for everyone regardless of experience: just look at the surrounding keyboard shortcuts where a mishit can go unnoticed, and the (much later) issue unsuspected and unconsidered.

Only Show Edges is more defenseless, as you can see, with other keyboard shortcuts closing in on all sides.

[Gavin at MRP]

So true! Myself and my coworker are running the same macOS and the same Illustrator version, and yet I wasn’t have this problem, so I knew there had to be a solution, and looking at the cursor status and what he was experiencing, I said to myself, “Wait a minute, I know I’ve seen this before — there’s got to be a solution out there.” And sure enough, this thread came up.

P.S. I know it looks like I’m a noob on here, but this is just my work profile for this new job. LOL. On my home profile, I’ve been using Illustrator since it was distributed by Aldus.

[Jacob Bugge]

Gavin, I could see your non noobishness. For my own part, my (only account) Join Date was reset in 2006, seemingly in connexion with the merging of the Adobe and Macromedia forums (where Macromedia screen names took presedence, by the way); in those days, threads were archived and then fell into the abyss within a few years after latest posts, which I found out in 2004 when looking in vain for some important older ones.

[claidheamdanns]

This is my personal and oldest SN still extant. I had an older one, but lost it when the company I was working for went bankrupt. I actually wrote a drawing program in AppleSoft about 8 years before Thomas and John wrote Photoshop, but I fell in love with their program when it came out, because it could do all the things my program could do, and the also the things I couldn't figure out how to program into mine.

[dawnw67006840]

Thanks for the tip! I have been using it for years, I came in this morning and that was happening to me first thing! I thought I was going crazy at first.

[pureKreativ]

Yay! thank you, thank you. I also struggled with that and I got so frusrated. But now I am happy because of you. :0)

[Denitsa5D24]

THANK YOU!

[Jacob Bugge]

You are welcome, Denitsa, in this 14th year.

[christinew73651305]

I have been having a bunch of trouble with this. My bounding box is showing and the only thing that it will let me do with an object is round the corners and move the object. This never happened until the new update and I have no idea why. Please help. I am getting really angry

[Monika Gause]

The object is a rectangle?

That's a known bug with certain systems. use the free transform tool instead.

[TyCron]

BIG THANKS! Bitty!

[JDiGi15]

That was it. OMG! Thank you so much. I never changed the settings, so I couldn't understand what happened.

[NjengaSheba]

Thank you very much. That issue has been stressing me up. I think I changed the settings as I was trying to un-group some objects using Ctrl+shift+G and I accidentally hit B instead of G.

Thank you.

[Jacob Bugge]

njengasheba,

It is even easier to mishit Ctrl+H (Show/Hide Edges), other commands closing in on all sides.

[JDiGi15]

That was it. Answer is correct.

[emmat12605753]

Thank you so much!

[channdanm68163727]

tHANK YOU

[susanr24870972]

Thank YOU!! This was driving me nuts! What a simple solution! 🙂