- In this movie, I'll show you how to scroll,
or if you prefer, pan using the Hand Tool.
So let's say I go ahead and zoom into my document
by pressing ctrl + , or cmd + on the Mac, a bunch of times,
and as a result, I'm just sitting here looking at
this mostly blank center portion of the first artboard.
If I want to scroll to, once again, David,
I could do so using these scroll boxes
in either the horizontal scroll bar
down here at the bottom of the screen,
or the vertical one along the right-hand side of the screen.
But it's easy to pass over the
element that you're looking for
and they're pretty clunky controls.
The better way to work is to take advantage of
another tool at the bottom of the tool box,
which is the Hand Tool.
And what it allows you to do
is just drag the image around like so.
Now, obviously this is the kind of thing
you'll be doing all the time inside of Illustrator,
which is why you'll most definitely want to know
about another keyboard shortcut,
and that's the spacebar.
So if I go ahead and switch back to my black arrow tool,
at the top of the tool box, I can get the Hand Tool
functionality on the fly just by pressing
and holding the spacebar
and then dragging the document wherever I like.
And then as soon as I'm done using the Hand Tool,
I have only to release the spacebar.
All right, now you can also scroll
using the scroll wheel on your mouse.
For example, I can scroll up or down incrementally.
But what if you want to scroll left or right?
Well, if you're using a Mighty Mouse on a Mac
or a trackpad on a portable computer,
and anything that allows you to pan around
on that device is going to work inside Illustrator as well.
But if you just have an old school scroll wheel,
then you press and hold the ctrl key here on the PC,
or the cmd key on the Mac,
then you scroll down to pan to the right
or you scroll up to pan to the left.
So again, that's the ctrl key,
or the cmd key on the Mac,
that gives you that control.
All right, one last thing.
I'm going to go ahead and switch
to a different artboard here,
by going up to the Window menu
and choosing the Artboards command.
And then I'll go ahead and double-click
in the third artboard, which is Art square 2,
in order to switch to this cube of cubes,
which includes some editable text.
And to see it, go ahead and close your Artboards panel,
and then go up to the Object menu
and choose the Show All command.
And that will show you any and all hidden elements
inside of the document, which is to say
this one text block right here.
And the reason this is here is because
I want you to see what happens when text is active.
Let's say I go ahead and click off the text to deselect it,
and then I switch to my Type Tool,
the one that looks like a T,
and I click somewhere inside of my text
to add the blinking insertion marker.
Well, let's say I zoom in on my document
by pressing ctrl + or cmd + on a Mac,
and as I result, I totally lose track of my text.
If I were to press the spacebar right now,
because the text is active,
I would enter a bunch of space characters,
which is definitely not something I want to do.
So, what's the alternative?
Well, this is a trick that only works when text is active.
You press and hold the alt key, or the opt key on a Mac,
and that will get you the Hand Tool on the fly
and then you can drag your document
so that you can see your text.
And then you can make any modifications you like.
Again, those modifications do not include
pressing and holding the spacebar.
So, I'll just go ahead and press the backspace,
or delete key, a few times to get rid of those new spaces
and I'll press the escape key
in order to deactivate my text.
And so, I want you to know that
that alt or opt key trick works only if text is active.
Notice if I click off the text
and I press the alt key, or the opt key on a Mac,
I do not see the hand cursor.
And the only way that I am going to see it
is to press and hold the spacebar like so.
And that's how you scroll,
or if you prefer, pan inside of a document
using the Hand Tool, as well as the scrolling capabilities
of your mouse, trackpad, or other device.