spacebar for handtool / option for drag copy command no longer working in Illustrator

[loquos]

Ok, so I JUST had this problem. After a terminally bad install of an OS update, I had to wipe my drive and do a clean install. I did a clean install of all my apps too - Adobe, Chrome, Evernote, etc.

Got everything back to the way it was before. Opened Illustrator to work on a file, and suddenly the spacebar wasn't bringing up the hand tool any more. Found this thread. Tried all of the applicable below (1-5). Still the shortcut wasn't working. Started closing apps one by one, until I only had Chrome & Illustrator open. STILL wouldn't work. Closed Chrome - tadaaa! Shortcut works now!

And I started Chrome back up and the bug doesn't seem to be coming back soooo, yea - pretty obscure bug, but definitely try closing out ALL your open apps to see if that fixes things. Thank goodness for this thread!

I just started experiencing this problem myself.

There is a good discussion here:
CS3 Bugs? Hand Tool & Proportional Scale Not Working

None of those suggested fixes have worked for me, but they might for you? More or less, here is a summary of that link:

1. reset AI's preferences by holding down SHIFT + OPTION + ⌘ (command/Apple) (Windows Shft+alt+ctrl) while starting Illustrator
2. deleting Illustrator's preference file from your Mac "user"/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.illustrator.plist
3. disabling Spotlight's shortcuts that use space bar in Spotlight's preference pane
4. "somebody in another topic suggested to kill some processes in the Activity Monitor to see what was causing the trouble. I then found out that my Last.fm helper was the trouble"
5. go to window>workspace>default to resets the panels and the key commands
6. update MS Office to the most recent patch
7. "turn off the replication in Entourage and do it manually"
8. Restart the Mac and DO NOT launch Entourage. Work like that for a while and see if the keys respond correctly.
9. update Quicken if you have that installed
10. quit VPN or other log on item that requires the use of a password

 

[mrlerch]

So this problem reared it's ugly head for me several times now. I am currently running macOS 10.12.1, using Illustrator CS5. I had a bunch of applications open (several Text Edit documents, Parallels Windows 10 virtual machine, Safari 20 or so window with multiple tabs, Chrome, Mail, and Skype). So what I did I started by closing applications. Closed Text Edit - no difference. Closed Chrome, no difference, closed Mail, no difference, same with Skype, Parallels, etc etc. The only thing left open was Safari. So I closed Safari. Checked Illustrator and it was still not working. Then I quite Illustrator, started Suitcase Fusion 6, disabled the font activation extension for Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign, and reactivated them. Then I restarted Illustrator with holding down the Shift, Option and command keys .... and ... voila ... it worked again.

Started Safari, with all of the open windows, Chrome, Parallels virtual machine... everything is fine. Not sure what happened here.

 

[UtahRugbyGuy]

I do a lot of design work in Illustrator cs3.

Normally when working with a document I use the spacebar to quickly bring up the handtool to drag around my document. This no longer works.

Shift no longer works for keeping art proportional when scaling.

Option no longer works when selecting then dragging artwork to make it copy.

Pressing h on the keyboard still activates the handtool though, same for pressing something like a and bringing up the direct selection tool.

Any suggestions on how to being back the other functionality on the keyboard? Perhaps a plist file I need to delete!

Halp! I'd greatly appreciate it!

Old thread but still ppl running into this issue:

This works:
(tried a few things based on other sites/threads).

Save your work, close all Adobe apps
(didn't work for just Illustrator. I had to close Photoshop and InDesign to make it work)

Option + Click-Finder (in Dock): Relaunch
(Takes just a few seconds)

Opened Illustrator again and problem was solved.

Some threads also said they had to restart computer and issue was fixed. Mine worked just doing the Relaunch Finder thing.

FYI: I'm still running an older CS 5.1 but from my understanding, it's the same issue with the apps running, any version, even CC.

One helper said this issue happens at random times from using the Command + H (hide) in any of the apps. I know this or something similar has happened to me in the past but I've been a designer using Adobe products since 1990 and it's very rare to me.

Hope this helps someone 🙂