Artboards: Renumber, Rearrange, and Reorder in Adobe Illustrator

Are your artboards out of order in Adobe Illustrator? Do you know how to create new Illustrator artboards to fit individual icons quickly? In this tutorial, I’m sharing my pro tips for efficiently working with multiple artboards in Adobe Illustrator.

Learn how to create artboards, number and name them, and rearrange artboards. Watch my video tutorial above, or read this summary of the steps:

*Clicking on artwork creates individually sized artboards in Illustrator*

Create Individual Artboard Sizes for an Icon Set

You can quickly create a set of artboards sized to fit each icon (great for exporting) in Adobe Illustrator by clicking or double-clicking with the Artboard tool. Here’s how:

Click on the Artboard Tool to enter artboard editing mode.
In the Artboards panel (found in the Window menu), you'll see the existing artboard (Artboard 1 in this case).
Go to the document window and resize Artboard 1 by double-clicking on your artwork with the Artboard tool. Now Artboard 1 is sized to fit the art.
To create artboards for the remaining icons, single-click on each one with the Artboard tool.

Don’t worry about the arrangement or the order of artboards at this point, we’ll fix that next.

*Above: the Artboard tool in the toolbar and confusing misnumbered artboard names in the panel*

Managing Artboard Names

With multiple artboards in Adobe Illustrator, Illustrator names them automatically with a number after each name. When the names are out of order with the artboard numbers, it can be confusing. For a quick fix, bulk rename the artboards.

*Renaming Illustrator artboards in bulk.*

Here’s how to rename multiple artboards:

Click on the Artboard tool to enter artboard editing mode.
In the Artboards panel, select all artboards by holding Shift and clicking on them.
In the Control bar at the top of the Illustrator window, enter a common prefix (e.g., "icon") in the Name field and press Enter.
This renames all the artboards and reorders the naming from first to last, so your artboard names (Artboard 1, Artboard 2, etc.) will match the artboard numbers.

My method above is the fastest, but the best process may be to name artboards individually with a descriptive name. In the Artboards panel, double-click on an artboard name to change it.

Now, let’s move one of our artboards to the top of the order in the Artboards panel.

*Use the buttons or drag and drop to reorder the selected artboard in the panel.*

Changing the Order of Artboards

To change the visual arrangement of the artboards in your document window, you first need to set their order correctly in the panel. Here’s my 2 step process of re-ordering and then rearranging them:

In the Artboard panel, click on an artboard to select it.
Move it up or down on the order by clicking the arrow buttons at the bottom of the panel. Or, drag and drop to change the order, like you would in the Layers panel.

⭐️ Moving your selected artboard to the panel’s first position does not change its location visually in the document window. To make the visual arrangement of artboards in the document window match the order you set in the panel, they must be rearranged. Here’s how:

*Click the button at the bottom of the panel to rearrange the artboards in Illustrator*

Rearranging Artboards

In the Artboards panel, click on the Rearrange Artboards button.
Adjust layout settings and spacing, and make sure that Move Artwork with Artboard is checked. Click OK.

A quick tip: by default, artboards are positioned from the top-left corner. To change the reference point, change it in the Control bar using the reference point icon before rearranging.

⭐️ After rearranging, you may need to rename them again so the numbers aren’t out of order. Follow the steps under “Managing Artboard Names” above.

*Using Transfer Each to add spacing around the art*

Creating a Margin for the Art

To avoid icons being too close to the artboard edges, scale them slightly. Using the Transform Each function, you can do all of the art in one step.

Exit Artboard mode, select the icons, go to Object > Transform > Transform Each.
Set the reference point at the bottom of the panel to the center point.
Set the scale to 95%, or whatever works best for your art, and make sure proportional scaling is locked. Click OK.

⭐️ A quick tip: if you work with strokes like the art above, set your stroke scaling in Preferences before scaling. (Edit > Prefences/Settings.) Check Scale Strokes and Effects as needed.

Working Efficiently in Adobe Illustrator

While making changes individually can be straightforward, this can easily waste time. This tutorial is about saving time with bulk actions like renaming, resizing, and rearranging multiple artboards at once.

Interested in learning related topics like exporting artwork and making export presets to save time? We talk about these tips and more in my Illustrator learning community. I hope these artboard pro tips are useful for your next design project in Illustrator!🖌️ -Laura