Illustrator crashes when triggering an action to flip an object horizontally or vertically.
I think I’ve finally narrowed this down!
I’ll cut to the chase:
• macOS Sonoma 14.7.5
• Illustrator v30.2.1
• Custom Action #1: Transform Panel > Flip Horizontal
• Custom Action #2: Transform Panel > Flip Vertical
Triggering Actions #1 or #2 with the play button in the Actions Panel - or a hotkey linked to the action - is successful if:
• The Transform Panel is open in a Panel and is the Active Tab
• The Transform Panel is completely closed (triggering the actions then open the Panel floating somewhere in the workspace)
Triggering Actions #1 or #2 with instantly cause Illustrator (30.2.1) to CRASH if:
• The Transform Panel is present in a Panel in the workspace, but is not the Active Tab
Whew!
That’s a load of frustration off my mind!
My Fix: I now just keep the Transform Window open in its own small Panel all the time. I never use it anyways, and would prefer to just keep it closed, but it’s annoying to have it pop up every time I flip an object, so keeping it stuffed quietly in the corner is the next best thing.
Additional info in response to a query on the Adobe Community forum:
It has been plaguing me on multiple versions of Illustrator after I upgraded from v29 I believe.
The crash happens on any and all objects in any file if I follow the steps outlined in my OP.
I’ve got a weird vertical mouse with extra hotkeys - two of which I use to trigger those actions - thought maybe the mouse was causing it after macOS upgrade, but then I got the same crash when clicking the play button in the Actions panel.
Full System restarts would seem to occasionally fix the problem for a while, then it all of a sudden it would crash again, and then reliably on every reboot of Illustrator after that. Now I think that after the system restarts, my Transform Panel would just happen to be the active tab, so no crashes until I inadvertently used another tab in the same Panel, then tried to Flip again.
The upload option will not seem to allow me to select my .aia actions file for upload.
Kyle Borgeson
shared this idea
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Also, Kyle, please share a link to the forum discussion as well
As for the .aia file — yeah, UserVoice restricts many file types... Try to rename it to .txt before uploading -
Odd. I too have Flip Horizontal / Vertical wrapped into actions (I’ve been calling these with F8/Shift+F8 for a decades now), but when I check this on Windows 10 (I mean I use them daily), Ai 30.2.1 doesn’t crash... no matter if the panel is docked or not, collapsed or not, compact or not, run with a hotkey or with a button from Actions, or with a Play button there.
Perhaps I’m missing something, or it’s a thing that happens either on a Mac (it can be) or at your machine only (it can be). But can you also record and share a video, just to be sure I’m doing it the way you mean it?
