Comments on: Curing Illustrator Ills: Resetting Preferences

By: gabriel

gabriel — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 12:15:11 +0000

thank you that saved my arse

By: Ilus

Ilus — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:59:48 +0000

DONT FORGET TO RESTAR AFTER DOING THAT! OTHERWISE WONT WORK! Cheers!

By: Teresa

Teresa — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:01:48 +0000

I tried trashing the preferences for AICS2, but it did not solve my problem. I keep getting an error when saving “an unknown error has occurred”. I tried re-installing AI and I am still getting the error. Any help with this?

By: Lee

Lee — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 18:53:01 +0000

If those directions didn’t work for you (as they didn’t for me), here’s mine: http://forums.adobe....sage/2133838#2133838

Instructions based on my experience – Illy CS4 on the Mac.

1. Close Illy.

2. Open Finder and go to:
(main > users >) home > Library > Preferences > Adobe Illustrator CS4 Settings > en_US

3. Rename the “en_US” folder to anything else.

4. Start Illy.

5. The “en_US” folder will be generated fresh. You can copy individual bits back from your copy and see if your problems return. (I moved my Workspace and Keyboard Shortcuts back).

That’s what it is for me. Of course if you have a different version of Illy or you aren’t in the US, or you aren’t on a Mac, it’ll be different. I’m guessing that’s easy enough to figure out.

Also, if you want you can just trash the “Adobe Illustrator Prefs” file in “en_US”.

By: Jeremy Schultz

Jeremy Schultz — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:31:40 +0000

They do appear to work for me, though I don’t get any dialog box that says I’m resetting preferences. I’m on a Mac so I hold Shift-Opt-Cmd-Ctrl immediately upon starting up Illustrator, and it launches normally except my preferences are back to default settings afterwards. PS to Mac users: if you launch from the Finder dock and hold the buttons before the launch, the Finder will throw up the little menu above the dock icon since you’re holding Ctrl. You can click the dock icon without holding the buttons and press them immediately afterwards.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:01:21 +0000

Is anyone else having issues using the key commands on start up of Illustrator to reset preferences? Am I not holding them long enough. Do I push them first? Do I push them after I start launching? Please help!

By: john anthony

john anthony — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 02:40:38 +0000

people…once a file is corrupt…forget it….being in AD/Design game i found that my butt was against the wall tooooooooooo many times with the corruption factor in Illustrator CS2….the BEST THING is to
always save the same file that you are working in Illustrator to save it as a PDF file and store it in the same place you store the original file…therefore, you can always open the PDF again in illustrator again and save as AI or eps file…now you just saved your butt but having your file to work on agiain…believe me this is the only cure!!!!

By: Dominik

Dominik — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 02:25:32 +0000

Resetting the preferences did not help in my case. Another solution when copy/paste and opening files slows down, is to change what printer is set as default. If it is a network printer that is not available, this is going to cause problems.

By: Lennie

Lennie — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 05:01:10 +0000

I have faced too many a times when; as I was saving a file, it seems as if it is WAS saving the file; but later the application seems to be ‘Not Responding’. And when I tried to open the last save version of that particular file; the file is ‘damaged and could not be repaired.’

Is there any way to fix the file and to prevent this from happening?

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 00:34:42 +0000

A quicker way to get back to work is once you’ve reset all your custom preferences (including any third party extension serial numbers) is to save a copy of the clean preference file somewhere else on your hard drive or on a CD. Then when Illy goes nuts, simply close Illy, copy/paste a clean copy of your custom prefs over the old prefs, and restart illy. MUCH faster.