When "Ungroup" Doesn't Work?

[MariaMartini]

I should probably know how to do this, but I don't, so I am asking a huge favor.

My customer sent me this Adobe Illustrator file that I need to make some minor changes to, but everything was grouped together.

I went to Object>Ungroup and clicked it, but nothing changed. I went back to Ungroup and I could no longer click it.

Is there another way?

Thanks!

***NEVERMIND*** I PLAYED WITH IT A BIT MORE AND I FIGURED IT OUT ***THANKS ANYWAYS***

 

[gabagoo]

its a mask most probably and if you dont have an unmask option you could try breaking the path. Be careful though as when you break apart masks, sometimes the image can change or pieces get deleted.

 

[signage]

I don't have illustrator, does it have break-a-part (uncombined)?

 

[Former member]

Uncompound is what you need.

 

[MariaMartini]

Thanks for the help guys! I think I did the unmask thing, worked great except a few letters split in two, but thanks to you'all on the forum, I learned how to fix that on a previous post.

 

[SignsOfMaine]

Even tho they figured it out, I just wanted to mention another thing I see all the time... so annoying. Many times I've had companies provide illustrator files where it's just a single jpg with a clipping mask around the edge... and otherwise there's nothing vector. Weirdly, it's really high res, like it started out life as a vector file. So you don't even suspect it's a jpg until you zoom way in. I always thought that was really dumb... like, who's the professional designer they pay 5 times more than you to set up these useless files?

Guess it was the compound path =)

 

[Deaton Design]

Its under object=compound path=release. If you release the path, some letters with centers will fill in. Just select that letter and go to make compound path, and that will fix it.

 

[gabagoo]

Even tho they figured it out, I just wanted to mention another thing I see all the time... so annoying. Many times I've had companies provide illustrator files where it's just a single jpg with a clipping mask around the edge... and otherwise there's nothing vector. Weirdly, it's really high res, like it started out life as a vector file. So you don't even suspect it's a jpg until you zoom way in. I always thought that was really dumb... like, who's the professional designer they pay 5 times more than you to set up these useless files?

Guess it was the compound path =)

I agree and we see this so much. I don't know if it is the ignorance of the designers or that this is the only way they learned how to do things which probably work for most applications. I have had files that as you unmask the file, another is there and another and so on until there is no way that you can use it when you finally finishing peeling the onion. I wonder if the masks are an illustrator thing that happen automatically or is the designer actually masking every layer?