The setting "Show/Hide Rulers" in the preferences should be written as "Always Show Rulers".

Bitte, bitte, pretty please,, die Diagrammfunktionen endlich überarbeiten, charts!

I can't believe this has really been fixed after 32 years! (or whenever rulers first became available in AI - I can't remember).

Thank you :-)

@cris black - Hey, thanks for the heads up! I actually spotted that in the preferences but it didn't work. I ended up shutting Illustrator down, opening it back up without opening a new document, ticked the checkbox, then exited and restarted Illustrator and now it works. Long wait for a simple fix, but so glad it's working now.

@Jeremy Jessup -- They added/fixed it in this latest update. Under Illustrator preferences, in the left column of the list, the 4th option down is "Show/Hide Rulers". If this is checked, the rulers show in every document (new and old) that you open. If it's not checked, no rulers.

I tried it many times, on old documents, new documents. Quit Illustrator and reopened and tried it again. Restarted my computer and tried again. Rulers showed every time!

I am so happy!!! Been waiting for this for a long long LONG time. Thank you Varun Sharma for finally understanding what we have all been asking for ... and getting it done for us!

Well, I love the updates in the recently released update to Illustrator. There are a lot of neat updates and useful improvements that have been included. But with that said, I've gotta ask; why not add the simple option to open documents with the rulers on by default with this update?

I have the same problem in photoshop but the weird thing is, somehow the rulers were showing automatically and after reinstalling the software they no longer do.

OMG I thought I was missing something. I just started using illustrator and was going crazy having to set the rulers every time. Glad it's being worked on.

How is there not a way to store this preference? Insanely stupid. I am so sick of having to recreate my preferred layout every time I open illustrator, or even for each file!

It reminds me when we had to go to preferences just to change the radius for a square. No sense at all.

I'm amazed that this issue has not beed completed yet has been requested over and over ... for years. One of the requests goes back to 2017 ... Somehow we need you to understand what we are looking for.

Yes, Illustrator 2020 has a box in the Preferences menu that can be checked which will make the rulers visible AFTER they have been turned on -- but that has to be done EVERY SINGLE time the program is restarted. As soon as the user Quits the program, the rulers must be turned on again upon the next opening.

You're halfway there ...

What your users are looking for and have been requesting over and over is simply this:
The option in the Preferences menu should be "Always Show Rulers"
• If clicked, the rulers open by default every single time Illustrator opens -- unless the user turns them off.
• If not clicked, the rulers do not show in any document when Illustrator is opened -- unless the user turns them on".

While I realize that this seems like a little thing in the big picture of what the program does, it is obviously important or it would not be requested over and over.

Please please please listen to your users and fix this for us.

Please make rulers on by default OR make a setting so users (US) can make rulers on by default !!!

To AI...., This has been going on over a year and now a second thread, bec u somehow think it was resolved. not!!! . Just put the ruler appearance option in the darn preferences. What part of this is so hard to understand? We pay for these products. Do u think u could listen??? Thank u!

Geez, are we still talking about this, come on Adobe.

Seconded! It'd be nice not to have to smash Ctrl+R when I open Illustrator for the first time every morning. Often I have to do so repeatedly, since for some reason Illustrator refuses to register the Ctrl key press and thinks I want to rotate an object I haven't even drawn yet.

Please have the option to enable rulers on BY DEFAULT ON PROGRAM OPEN.

Hey all.

Adobe goofed up, they marked this as "Complete" so my guess is, as far as they're concerned, it's done and they won't be revisiting it, soooo...

I started a new request that can't possibly be misinterpreted, even if English is their 2nd or 3rd language.

Go here: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-feature-requests/suggestions/39818080-rulers-on-by-default and vote it up.

They were so close... so close...

You recently closed this request as ""Completed" it is most certainly NOT complete. It's close, so close we can taste it, but it isn't finished yet.

Right now, we have the new, and almost glorious, option to "show/hide rulers across all documents". It works nearly wonderfully well as every new document I open (after enabling the new preference and hitting Ctrl + R) has rulers.

I open a new file, hey, rulers!
I open an old file, yesssss, rulers!
I close AI and open it the next day and <sad trombone> NO RULERS?!?!?
Ctrl + R and there they are again, in every document I open...

AI needs to remember that I hit Ctrl + R yesterday, or last Tuesday, or January 2016 to get the rulers to display and then display them whenever I open the program, until such a time in which I turn them off, which quite frankly, will be never, but hey, other people might like not having rulers, so make it remember that they're off when they're turned off and on when they're turned on...

This isn't rocket surgery.

I like Rulers on. Bob likes them off. The setting in preferences should read as "Show/Hide Rulers by Default". If it's checked, AI shows me the rulers, every document, every time. When it's not checked, AI shows no rulers for Bob, every document, every time.

So I took the issue up with the support team and this is the message I received back after 3 rounds of explaining why the feature they've introduced wasn't the one we asked for:

"We would like to inform you that, the option has been built in the Preferences which allows rulers to be hidden/visible across all open document.
Turn on “Hide/Show Rulers Across All Documents” Preferences > General.

After turning this ON, do Hide/Show Rulers in the View menu (Cmd/Ctrl + R) once to refresh rulers.

So whenever you open a new file after turning on the option "Show/Hide Rulers across all Documents," you just need to enable the "Show Rulers" once and then whenever you open/create a new document, the rulers will show up.

Hence its not a feature request, the feature has already been implemented in the application."

They don't get it, period. They don't understand our needs because I don't think they actually use the software they create for us. They build elements they 'think' we need and ones they 'think' are better for our workflows but really they haven't got a clue.

Neeraj - I'm shocked and disgusted as a purchasing customer that you or a team member haven't at least revisited this feed to discuss your reasons for delivering an inaccurate representation of what we voted for. We suggested an idea, it's better than the one you've implemented - why do you not listen to us?

You guys suck

I would love to see a solution to this issue. If nothing else, it would be great if they could reverse the default so that the rulers are always on at startup, with the option to turn them off if you want to rather than having to turn them on because they're hidden by default.

Ii is strange that the support team is having so much difficulty in resolving an issue that seems so simple.