Duplicating an entire artwork with contents within it only returns white background - why?

Question

I want to duplicate an entire artboard with all the artworks within it to another location in Illustrator CC, and I think it can be done by pressing ⌥ and dropping and dragging. However, when I tried it, the resultant artwork is only made up by the entire white background, and all the artworks within the original artboard were not duplicated properly.

And I tried to push the white background back in order to confirm that it just hides all the artworks behind it, but the artworks wasn't hidden.

So how can I duplicate the entire artwork with all the contents within it?

Answer 1

As long as you are just trying to duplicate the artboard within the same file, you should be able to just pick Duplicate Artboards from the Artboards panel.

As @Lauren Ipsum noted though, you need to be sure all of the content you wish to have duplicated is unlocked. I recommend going to Object > Unlock All or pressing ⌘ / Ctrl / Command+⌥ / Alt / option+2 before duplicating the artboard.

Answer 2

This could mean a whole lot different things have gone wrong while copying. I don't think you can copy an artboard from an active document to another, but they are fast workarounds to this. Is it a vector art or flattened/rasterized? Are the layers locked? I am not sure about the key combination you are referring to but on Windows, copying is done by ALT + drag the item

Answer 3

This is issue was driving me bonkers and I found the solution. I think the OP wanted to use the shortcut to copy the entire clipboard.

Switch to Artboard mode. Shift + Option (Mac) Shift + Alt (PC)

Look for this button on the top button bar. Toggles the ability to copy the artboard contents. Hope this helps someone.

Answer 4

Remove the background layer lock before duplicating.