I still don’t really understand that one. I turned that off and, wow!, smart guides became enabled again. What the heck? It took me a while of searching around until I realized that someone working on the document had enabled View > Grids & Guides > Snap to Document Grid (a feature I rarely think about, much less use). The guides just wouldn’t show up! When I looked at the View > Grids & Guides menu, it showed it as “on” but it was grayed out. Here’s another one that got me recently: Smart Guides (one of my favorite features in CS4 and later) wasn’t working in a document. That is, if you turn off Overprint Preview, the panel disables, too.

Perhaps they were active a moment ago, but not now! What’s up? Well, this panel is linked to View > Overprint Preview. Separations panelįor example, you may see all your inks in the Separations Preview panel, but they may all be grayed out.

What is going on? Well, it’s usually because the feature is “linked with” or “dependent on” some other feature. I know it should work, but it’s not working! Sometimes the feature is even grayed out (disabled) in some menu or panel, even when I don’t think it should be. Something that drives me crazy: I try a feature and it doesn’t work.