ILLUSTRATOR SCALING ISSUE:
Every now and then, when deleting elements in the file that have been created very large or even document sizes that had a background color fill that covered the entire page document, you can delete that, and wind up not actually deleting everything depending on how you deleted them. You may have a single point or “node”left in the art. To not be aware of this issue, can drive one nutty trying to figure out what is preventing you from printing or scaling. You may not find it unless you happen to unlock all, and then select all....and view down to reveal that you do have a single point on the farthest most outsides of the document page. These hidden boogers cause printing errors (Document is larger than the printable area) and also scaling issues as is in most cases. It gives you the same error you see in image below.
Today, I had the exact same error, but I did not have any nodes on the outsides. I am aware of that old issue with nodes on the outside. Typically from expanding an element and deleting parts, but not all. In this case, it was something within my multi colored, multi element (unexpanded) art that I received from someone who created the art in another program such as Freehand or Corel Draw. I assume something did not get converted or translated exactly right for Adobe.
My resolve, was to select all, expand, merge same fill colors, and then re-group. No more "cannot scale” issue. So this is a fix (in addition to) this one above about deleting or looking for hidden points/nodes when others have the same thing, but no nodes on the outside. Once I did the steps described, I had no scaling issue.
