Shift key not constraining proportions

[hschiffke]

I have this problem in Illustrator from time to time where holding down the shift key doesn't constrain the proportions of any object. I think I found an obvious solution at one point, but now can't remember what it was - Arrrg!

I've read several forums where people had trouble with Entourage or other software, but none of them seemed to fit my situation. The problem only occurs in Illustrator on my Mac , the windows version seems to be ok. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

[The Repro Kid]

It may have something to do with which version of illustrator you are using. Older versions of illustrator were very sensitive with the order in which you did things. In older versions, if you did not hold down the shift key before you clicked and began dragging with your mouse, the program would not respect the constrain proportion request. Newer versions of Illustrator do not seem to have this restriction, you can invoke the shift key at any time, either before or during the click and drag, to constrain the proportions.

[hschiffke]

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately it's CS2 and it happens even when I hold down shift before the click and drag. Ugh.

[The Repro Kid]

The only other details on procedure I can offer up is that you must drag at 45° angle to constrain overall proportions. Dragging with shift key at 90° vertical will scale only the height and dragging with the shift key 90° horizontal will scale only the width.

[coningham]

Have you tried trashing the AIPrefs file?

[hschiffke]

Yup, dragging at 90 degrees and tried deleting the preferences file. Thanks for the suggestions.

[The Repro Kid]

Yup, dragging at 90 degrees... Yipe! Better re-read that more carefully! 45° is what you should be dragging to scale both height and width, which would be considered proportional. Dragging 90° will give anamorphic scaling, not proportional. I hope I'm not confusing the issue by adding too many details.

[hschiffke]

Oops, meant 45 and wrote 90. However, good news: after lurking around the Adobe forums long enough, I found out what my problem was! It was my Quicken auto updater (that thing that downloads your bank account info to your Quicken register). Apparently those things have a nasty habit of modifying your modifer keys. I turned it off, and now I'm back and scaling proportionally to my heart's content. Thanks for all the advice!

[Paul C]

Great! Now Quicken is screwing with us.

Glad you solved it and thanks for posting the fix.

peace

[The Repro Kid]

Actually, I was going to suggest that a coworker of yours may have lightheartedly modified your key commands. Looks like you found the culprit on your own.

Hey, PaulC, do you have a Day off or something? You seem to be conspicuously present today.

[Paul C]

I have been slammed lately but there is a minor break in the storm. Gotta catch up when you can…

peace