It makes no difference if you have been using a specific application for weeks, months, or years, you undoubtedly encounter those jarring hiccups where the application’s interface changes in some sudden, and mysterious way. I find myself in these situations from time to time which are sometimes easy to fix, sometimes hard, but always frustrating because I’ve got to stop my work and switch gears into “troubleshooting” mode.
I was recently working in Adobe Illustrator when I noticed that the application’s “Smart Guides” were not displaying as I moved individual elements of the icon that I was creating. If you’ve used Illustrator for even a short time, you’ll know that smart guides provide valuable, dynamic, visual feedback as you draw or move elements on the artboard. If you’re not using smart guides then you should. If you do use smart guides then you know how inconvenient it is to lose them.
I instantly went to Google in search of a resolution and found an abundance of claims that this issue was caused by a bug in the most recent update to Illustrator. Although this problem may be related to an Illustrator bug in some situations, this was not the case for my specific issue and the “fix” was simple.
A (Possible) Fix
Buried in the “Adobe Illustrator Feedback” forum, I found the solution to my issue in a feedback post submitted by “helena” (https://illustrator.uservoice.com/users/861054781-helena). This post recommends the following procedure:
- Via menu “View” then select “Smart Guide”
- Via shortcut Command-U ( Apple )
- With windows it is probably:
Via shortcut CRTL- U ( Windows ) - Unselect “Smart Guide”
- Uninstall and reinstall
It’s important to note, that I didn’t need to completely follow procedure outlined above. When I looked under the “View” menu, I found that “Smart Guides” had become unchecked (probably due to me mistyping a keyboard shortcut earlier in my workflow). I found that simply re-checking the “Smart Guides” option revealed the smart guides that I was missing and allowed me to get back to work.