Meanwhhile, web apps are going to allow this. Not Ai though.
https://x.com/tldraw/status/2022838096601981064

I'd forgotten this was even supposedly on Adobe's radar and your comment popped up. To be honest compared to the absurdity of having a products that randomly changes your fonts this one goes on the long list of work arounds. It's frustrating. It's inefficient. It's a bloated piece of ancient code that should have been rewritten from the ground up years ago. Yep - It's the Illustrator we love and loath. Expectation of this changing is very, very low. Existing professional users are not their focus.

It's been eight years. The years pass, and we're still waiting... The world of design is changing, new eras come and go, but the absurdities remain. Such is the fate of Adobe enthusiasts.

We absolutely need this. I cannot explain how frustrating this is in my line of work. I design custom boards that require a bunch of stylized sections, often they will have drop shadows within 1/2" of each other. It is INFURIATING trying to move sections or edit them with a drop shadow present. Its really frustrating to have to go to appearance, turn off shadows for each section I need to edit, then turn it back on.

A preference which offers 'Select Ignores Drop Shadows' would make life so much easier. Quite often it's necessary to select an object by its fill rather the the path. Problem is, drop shadows of nearby objects keep getting in the way.

Only option is to lock objects or layers... this can be extremely frustrating when you need to lock and unlock several objects or layers simply to select a single object beneath a drop shadow.

Situations where this frequently comes an issue includes artwork containing: multiple layers (25 +), several objects with overlapping drop shadows, pathfinder generated compound shapes with over-stamped lines and clipping paths also containing over-stamped shapes and drop shadows.

An alternative solution would be to have a quick access to the 'Select Object By Path Only' option: http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/41401294

This adds a ton of friction to my projects that use a lot of effects. Please give us an option to disable selecting objects by clicking on their effects.

Again, there's no reason at all for someone to choose to select an object by it's shadow, and if this must be how it works, at least I should be able to disable or enable this behaviour if I want it.

I don't know why this is possible, but when I add a shadow effect to an object, when I try to select something that is behind it, I keep selecting the object that is above with the shadow effect, even thoung I am cliking outside the object. This becomes especially annoyng when the shadow is really big.

I know that I can enable "Selection only by paths" in the preferences, but that's not really a solution, and I know that is possible to hold CTRL do "select behind" but that adds extra clicks, and for someone that's used to work fast, is not a good option.

I uploaded a video showing what I'm talking about. The circle on the left has a shadow that prevents me to select the shape below it.

I wonder why the developers think that this makes sense, and why they didn't fixed yer?

I did a test to separate the drop shadow from its object,
it was a page curl in illustrator, in order to select just the drop shadow, I had to Expand Appearance then Ungroup and select. Too long of a process, if was working on a graphics with lots of drop shadows, it wouldn't be as easy.
I can see the developers thinking one might move the object without its shadow, therefore it has to be attached. I agree with Sofia Long point when working on a detailed illustration it would be time consuming, Object Selection by Path works on text only drop shadow is still attached.
I think there should be a tab in the Appearance Panel to detach both, or even better right click would be ideal just like as Unlock.

has a temp work around is to switch to outline mode select than switch back. hot keys are Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y

This feature is impossible to work with. We need to either go back to how it was altogether, or we need to the option to toggle it off. Object selection by path is not good enough. It limits the clickable area of an object to a tiny thread. You can't use clipping masks properly because of it. When working on multiple artboards and detailed illustrations you still can't click what you need. PRIORITISE THIS PLEASE

>> Observation: area selection somehow avoids selecting edges of drop shadows.

What in the world made you decide to allow an item to be selected by clicking its outer glow or drop shadow, and then make the only way to turn this off to also turn off the ability to select items by their fill? This is truly rendering the program unusable to me in some cases right now. Please change this so that things cant be selected by their shadow or outer glow effect, this is a terrible feature.

The ones who commented that it works - try to do some big projects with this "option" and guess again 🤦🏻‍♀️

Dror, it works indeed. But it also prevents selecting an object by clicking its fill :)

This works 100% - Preferences > Selection & Anchor Display > Object Selection by Path Only.

Who at Adobe made this kind of decision to select an object by its shadow/glow? Do you have any developers/design leads there who really use your products? When artists use shadows/glows, they can be really far away from the object plus the blur around can be shallow... So now the situation is that the user never knows what is selected. So utterly mindless development decision. I just do not understand whats the reason behind this decision.

Neeraj Nandkeolyar Has found the solution guys.... It's not massively ideal that we can only select edges but it's helped a lot.
"Neeraj Nandkeolyar (Sr. Product Manager, Adobe Illustrator) commented · There is a setting in that may help in case of large glow/shadows. Preferences > Selection & Anchor Display > Object Selection by Path Only.

Enabling this option will disable clicks on appearances (fill/strokes/effects) from selecting the object. Only paths can be used for selection."

please fix this! Horrible to work with

This is unforgivable. I've been reading so many complaints. It took me half an hour to figure out what was "broken" in Illustrator preventing me from selecting objects. I too have some huge drop shadows blocking EVERY **** OBJECT BELOW ONE LAYER! EVERYTHING! I can't select ONE **** THING below a few small objects because of a drop shadow.

This is insane. Does anyone at Adobe actually try and use their own programs??? How could this be going on for an ENTIRE YEAR with no one actually acknowledging it or fixing it????

FIX THIS **** THING ALREADY!!!! I am paying a fracking fortune. It's stuff like this that makes many people look at much cheaper, equally feature rich alternatives like Krita or Affinity.