how: moving individual anchor points & not whole path

It should be a simple matter of using the Direct Selection Tool and click-dragging the anchor you wish to move. Sounds like you've thought of that however. You aren't trying to move an anchor point along a path are you? As in sliding an anchor without actually altering how either side of it effects the path? That's not possible (except with Gradient meshes).

Well it sounds as though you're doing things correctly. If you try a new path, does it work? Perhaps there's some appearance applied to the path you're working on that's causing issues.

If you could link to the problmeatic file, I could take a look. Simply delete things not related to the path and upload it somewhere (can't upload here).

How are the anchors highlighted on screen? Is the one you're moving a filled rectangle while the others are unfilled? Then only this one should move. If all anchors on the path are filled, then you would have to properly select the one you want to move.

The anchor in the middle of this path is direct selected. It has got a blue-filled square.

The other anchors are not selected; they have white-filled squares.

did you ever get this figured out ??? I'm having same problem... It drags the whole letter...

Deselect the path. Then Direct Select a single anchor.

You can do this by dragging a rectangle over the place where the anchor is.

You can also uses Smart Guides. They will tell you where the anchor is.

Thank You !!! Correct Answer

I had this issue - been searching for ages to find out what's wrong. I realised that I had the 'Group' Direct Selection Tool selected, not the Direct Selection Tool - if I had pressed the 'A' shortcut, I wouldn't have had the problem. Solved my issue ... not sure if this helps ...

I think I've worked this out.

I've been having this same issue... where I try and drag a single anchor point to move it, and it moves the whole object, arrrg. ...  and I WAS clicking on the white arrow, not the black arrow.

I realised when it worked that anchor point was the only one with a filled in square icon (showing selected), with the others showing as empty squares.

When it moved the whole object incorrectly I realised that for some reason all anchor points had been selected, all were showing filled in.

I then realised the problem is if you click inside the object to show the anchor points, they are all selected by default.

SO, you instead need to click on an EDGE of the object. Then this will show the anchor points unselected (not filled in).

You can then click the anchor point you want to move and drag it in isolation. You can do this in one movement I think, but I tend to click once so I can see it's filled in (selected) and then click and drag it.

Hope this helps someone out, it was making me crazy! Haha.

kinda late for an answer but a permanent solution for me was going into preferences and checking Object selection by path only(or making sure its checked).

Edit>Preferences>General>Object Selection by Path Only

or Ctrl+K>Object Selection by Path Only

Worked for me! Thanks

Thank you. That was EXACTLY the solution.

I'm so glad I found this thread! This was tripping me up for daysssss