Cancelling Illustrator's Print dialog before the print job finishes leaves the
active document in a partially-locked state ("limbo"): the canvas still responds to
interaction (you can pan/move the artwork), but File → Save / Cmd+S silently does
nothing — no save dialog, no write, no error. The document cannot be saved through
the normal UI and must be recovered through scripting or force-quit + data recovery.

In the observed case the affected document had never been saved to disk, so all work existed only in memory. A user who trusts Cmd+S (which reports no error) can lose everything if the app is force-quit without a
scripted-save workaround. The failure is silent, which makes it especially dangerous.

Adobe Illustrator 2026, version 30.5.1
macOS 26.5.1 (build 25F80)
Apple Silicon Mac
Consistent / 100% via the steps below. Not timing-dependent — cancelling the print progress bar at any point triggers it. Has recurred across multiple sessions.

Steps to Reproduce
100% reproducible via the standard print flow — not timing-dependent:
1. Open a document in Illustrator 2026.
2. File → Print (or Cmd+P) to open the Print dialog.
3. Click Print. The print/spooling progress bar begins.
4. Click Cancel on that progress dialog at any point while the bar is moving (it does not matter how early or late — cancelling at any time triggers it).
5. Return to the document and attempt to save (Cmd+S) → Save silently does nothing.

Expected Result
Cancelling a print job returns the document to a normal editable state. Save works
normally.

Actual Result
- The document enters a "limbo" state.
- Canvas interaction (panning, moving objects) still works.
- Cmd+S / File → Save does nothing — no dialog, no save, no error message.
- The condition does not clear on its own; it persists until the app is restarted.

Technical observations (captured via CLI on the live, stuck process)

These strongly suggest the menu-command dispatch is gated by a stale modal-session
flag left over from the cancelled Print dialog, while the scripting/Apple Event path
is not gated:

• The Illustrator process was healthy, not hung — process state S (sleeping/normal), not spinning; UI remained responsive.
• Apple Events were fully functional — scripted reads of the document returned instantly (name, modified, count of documents all responded).
• modified of current document returned true (unsaved changes present).
• Reading file path of current document threw an error (document had no resolvable on-disk path — it had never been saved).
• Cmd+S silently no-op'd, but a scripted save current document in file <path> as Illustrator succeeded, wrote a valid 10.4 MB PDF-compatible .ai, and flipped modified to false.

The divergence between "menu Save does nothing" and "scripted Save works" is the key
diagnostic: the write machinery is intact; only the UI command path is being suppressed.

Workaround (until fixed)

Run this in Terminal (adjust the destination path/filename) to rescue the document
without losing work:
bash
osascript \
-e 'set destFile to POSIX file "/Users/<you>/Desktop/<DocumentName>.ai"' \
-e 'with timeout of 120 seconds' \
-e 'tell application "Adobe Illustrator"' \
-e 'save current document in destFile as Illustrator' \
-e 'end tell' \
-e 'end timeout'

Then force-quit and relaunch Illustrator before continuing work.