When the popup appears, it won't allow you to click OK, but you can press enter on your keyboard and it will go away. Super annoying that I can't switch the kerning to Optical. It seems to work for some text sections, but not others. All the same typeface.

The same problem is here!!! Fix it, please ASAP!

+1

Kerning is very frustrating on Illustrator CC18.

If I try to reset a whole text box kerning settings to 0 or optical I get the error:
"Kerning on extended selections can only be set to Auto or 0. To modify spacing between multiple characters, use the Tracking option." I can't even click OK to dismiss this error. And then have to adjust all kerning one character by one.

Also if I adjust the kerning before the first character on the second line, the adjustment does not display unless I move the whole text object. Really awful to use.

Ditto all comments, used to work fine. Now I have to correct kerning one by one on multiple boxes ANNOYING!

I don't understand how this bug remains. It seems like most graphic designers don't do anything besides adjust kerning, post about kerning, criticize kerning. A person has to select all the text and set the kerning to 0, then a person may select "optical" or whatever. Else-wise, this error pops up that won't close by clicking OK, I have to press escape 4-5 times and click around, and get upset.

Please fix ASAP. This is a real killer when trying to design, especially when you're in the professional space (which is what your products are supposedly geared towards).

In the English language version, you cannot _click_ on the OK button in the dialog, but you can use the Return key to dismiss the warning window. I hope that works for you as a workaround until this bug is fixed.

When I wrote texts.
I pushed kerning pulldown menu button on Letter panel(文字パネル).
Then Illustrator CC 2018 backed alert window with OK button(see attached file).
But the OK button did not work.
So I had only one choice that is forced termination.

This is my environment.
MacBook Pro 15inch 2017
OSX 10.12.6 (16G1036) Japanese ver.
Illustrator CC 2018 (22.0.1) Japanese ver.

Please fix it.
Thanks.

Same thing here. Very annoying.

I am having this problem too. Illustrator keeps freezing and I am losing work and time. It is very frustrating.

The workaround from Ankit (Illustrator) works, but PLEASE fix this! I am considering rolling back to an earlier version of AI which didn't have this issue. I use to be able to select ALL type on the page and change the kerning with one click. Thank you Adobe for your help.

LOOK QUICKER

I am also having this issue. But, Ankit's work around (posted below) did work for me, for the time being at least.

Please fix soon, Adobe!

A clue for Adobe ...?

This bug appears when the dropdown for Kerning is [empty].
It seems the dropdown is trying to default to some erroneous value -from- empty.

I selected 2 text objects, one Optical kerning, one Metric kerning. This causes the Kerning dropdown to display as blank.

If you click the dropdown, then try to click or arrow-key to a value, it causes the error.
If you press the "O" key, the value immediately jumps to Optical. Sometimes I get the error popup, sometimes not, but either way the Kerning is set to Optical for the text objects.

Once there is a value set, the dropdown works fine.

Please please fix, it's making me insane.

Same issue here since the 2018 update. Please address. Just an FYI. Seems like a lot of typography related bugs in the 2018 update. I've run into similar reported issues for Photoshop too, relating to the character leading palette being inoperable — and being directed to the Properties panel as a workaround. Maybe add some more QA time before the next launch. $50 a month is pretty steep price for unnecessary headaches.

Same problem please resolve this issue, Adobe.

Same issue here. Using the touch type tool is at least a usable workaround for the time being.

Running into this issue. Please fix adobe! Can't kern any type without the program locking up.

SOLUTION!! After months of dealing with this issue I finally solved it on my Mac Pro. I use three monitors. Two Cinema displays and one Samsung HDTV. The Samsung is up and to the left of my system mounted on the wall. While showing my supervisor my work on the Samsung I noticed when I clicked the kerning tab the dropdown was displaying on my Cinema display. When I move Illustrator back to the Cinema display the dropdown was not displaying at all. Now thinking it was a display driver issue, I rearranged my displays in the System settings so that they were all inline with each other instead of staggered to represent the real-life setup. Ureka! Success! Illustrator is working perfectly again. To recap, the HDTV connected to my HDMI port was set up in the arrangement settings in an overlapped configuration. I arranged them inline with each other and the problem is fixed.

Hi Chris,

Thank you for reporting the issue.This is Under review.
We are able to reproduce this issue in house.
I would request you to use the below steps and see if this resolves your issue as a workaround:
Step1: Press Escape,Spacebar or Enter Return to dismiss the dialog.
Step 2: Set cursor in field, type 0, then use dropdown to choose Auto.

Regards
Ankit Goyal