Why Won’t This Move?

Four numbers explain most of it

Six different tools can take over your left click. Three views share one selection. Undo is ten changes deep, and a signed-in session lasts thirty days from the last time you used it. Those four numbers sit underneath most of the “the planner is broken” messages we get, and none of them are faults — they are decisions, each reversible with a click or a keystroke once you know which one you are looking at.

Two remedies come before any specifics, because between them they clear a good half of the list. Press Escape. Then click the tool button again — the buttons are toggles, and a toggle still held down is the commonest reason a click goes somewhere strange. If selection behaves afterwards, you have found it.

For everything else, the shortcut is Emma: the Ask Emma button in the 2D toolbar — the speech bubble with a question mark, not the plain bubble right after 📍, which is Chats & contacts — inside All tools (the grid button) when the window is too narrow for the whole strip. Right-click it — press and hold on a touch screen — and her typing panel opens. Start there. Typing is free and needs no microphone, and every question you type carries a written statement of your planner’s live state, so she can tell you which cause on this page is yours. You do need to be signed in; Try it as a guest counts. A plain click opens a voice call instead, and a second click hangs up. The Emma you can message under Chats reads your saved designs rather than the planner’s live state, so for this kind of question, use the button.

She is not looking at a picture of your screen. The planner hands her a short written statement of the situation instead:

• Which view you are in, and what is switched on — plan, elevation or 3D, plus any tool still armed, which between them answer a good many “it is not there” and “it will not select” questions
• The room — the walls you have drawn and the ceiling height of each, since height is set per wall rather than once for the room
• The selected item — catalogue code, size, the wall it sits on, and how far off the floor it is
• Overlap warnings — the same overlaps the plan flags with a red ⚠ among the gap numbers, in words
• Your last few edits, and the last message the app showed you — usually the one you dismissed without reading, which is very often the whole explanation
• Whether you are signed in, and whether the design has a name yet — which settles most “Save did nothing” questions in one line

The honest scope, then: she can tell you what state your planner is in and which of the possible causes matches. She cannot see a bug and will not pretend to — her answers are grounded in this written guide, and when the lookup comes back with nothing relevant she says she is not certain and points you at a human.

Voice needs you signed in (an account or the guest option both count), microphone permission and a supporting browser, and it has two modes. “Just talk” answers questions but cannot see your live state or touch the design. It is free with no daily limit on Pro, Designer and Studio, and thirty free minutes a day on any other account, then GH Coins in five-minute blocks; a guest gets ten minutes a day and then voice stops until tomorrow, because a guest account cannot hold coins. “Do it for me” reads the same statement the typing panel gets and can act on it — select an item by its number, move it, undo, save — and it uses GH Coins from the first minute; it is not available on a guest account. To switch, pick Do it for me at the top of her panel and confirm, or ask for a change during a Just talk call and confirm the Switch Emma to editing mode? card that appears. Free minutes reset on the Toronto calendar day. The button is the meter — unlit means the microphone is off and nothing is being spent, lit green means the line is live. If it never lights up, that is a different chapter.

Through the rest of this chapter, Type or say marks a question — typing it is free — and Say marks something she does for you, which takes a Do it for me call.

Type or say “Something odd is happening — read me what you can see.”

Clicking does the wrong thing: something else owns the mouse

This happens to almost everybody in the first ten minutes, and it reads as a total failure: the planner has stopped selecting. It has not. A tool is still switched on, and while it is on it owns the left click — every click goes to that tool rather than to the selection, which is precisely what you asked for when you turned it on.

Six tools behave this way, three that draw and three that paint, and the tell is always the same: look at what your click produced rather than at what it failed to do. The thing that appeared names the tool that is armed.

The countertop one catches the most people, because it sits in a tab you opened for another reason: you turned its painter on to try a colour, went back to the room, and a click on a top now paints it instead of selecting it. Escape, or a right-click, puts the brush down. Whichever painter is armed owns the click. One rule, not three.

If Escape clears it and normal selection comes back, stop debugging. You have your answer and nothing is wrong with your design.

Stop drawing walls · 1:36

Type or say “Every click is drawing something instead of selecting — what have I got switched on?”

It will not select — or it did, in the wrong window

You picked a cabinet in the elevation, looked across at the top view, and it is not highlighted there — and an Alt + arrow hop lands somewhere you did not expect. Nothing is broken: the selection belongs to the view that made it. The views are on screen together and share one selection, which is why it has to belong somewhere — only that view paints it as selected, and Alt + arrow follows that view’s own layout. The right sidebar and Move Object act on it either way. Click the cabinet again in the view you intend to work in and the highlight follows you.

Three other reasons a click lands on nothing, in the order worth checking:

• A tool is armed — the previous section, and still the likeliest cause on this page. Escape first, always
• You clicked the cabinet when you wanted the wall — walls are selected on the wall band itself, never on something standing in front of it, and the wall is what the elevation and the ceiling-height card follow
• It is behind something — from your current angle in 3D a base cabinet can sit entirely behind a tall unit, and the click hits what is in front

For that last one there are pointers that never miss. In the plan, Alt + click again and again peels down through stacked items, and Alt + an arrow key hops the selection to the next item that way. In 3D, X-Ray hides whatever stands between you and its focus point, and with it on, a right-click on the thing in front hides that by hand. And there is Emma: every item carries a number, printed on it in the 2D top view, so you can read it off your display and say it in a Do it for me call. Asking her to select a number highlights it and changes nothing else — a safe confirmation step before a command you are unsure about.

One item behaves differently on purpose. Drag a corner cabinet near the end of a wall and it is pulled back into the corner — that pull is what makes the two runs line up. To park one just off the corner, turn down Corner Cab Magnet in ⚙ 2D Settings.

Type or say “What have I got selected right now?”

It moved — just not where you meant

Cabinets snap to their neighbours and to the ends of walls, and the reason is worth stating because it is the reason you should not want it off: a run assembled without it comes out with accidental gaps that are invisible on screen and expensive on site.

The cost is the moment you meet here — you drag a box somewhere specific and it lands somewhere else. Two causes, and they look identical.

• The spot is already takenSomething occupies the stretch of wall you are aiming at, and two boxes cannot claim the same run, so the drop is refused — Cabinets overlap, moved back — and the cabinet goes back where it was.FixMake room first: move, narrow or delete whatever is in the way, then drag again. An overlap that does get into the plan shows as a red ⚠ with the overlap in inches, in that wall’s row of gap numbers; the cabinets keep their colour, and the ⚠ clears itself the moment the overlap is gone.Type or say“Have I got anything overlapping?”
• The snap is pulling it to the neighbourYou want a deliberate gap and the drag keeps closing it, because closing it is the snap’s entire job.FixStop dragging. Select it and use the direction buttons on Move Object in the right sidebar — each press moves it by the value in its Step box — or click the gap number beside it and type the distance you want; a typed number is taken literally and is not overridden by the snap. The arrow keys do not move a cabinet in 2D; in 3D with Edit 3D on they nudge it 1″ a press, 12″ with Shift.Say“Move number six three inches left.”

That second fix generalises: when a snap is fighting you, type the number. Dragging is a negotiation with the snap; typing is not. It is also how you correct a room you drew roughly — click the wall band in the top view, type the real length into the wall card, and the cabinets already on that wall stay put relative to the wall rather than being thrown off it. Wall by wall, that is far safer than redrawing.

Type a gap · 1:46Move by an exact step · 1:02

Two things that look like mangled numbers and are not. Left and right in a spoken move run along the item’s own wall rather than along your screen, which is why the answer does not change when you spin the 3D view round. And the inch / millimetre toggle changes every label at once and nothing underneath: everything is stored in inches, so switching back and forth alters only what is printed.

Type or say “Which wall is my selected cabinet on, and how far along it?”

It is not there, or it is drawing itself wrong

The other half of “nothing happened” is “nothing appeared”. These are views and modes rather than missing data: the thing you are hunting for exists, and is either drawn somewhere else or drawn correctly according to a setting you did not know you had set.

• The elevation shows the wrong wall, or nothing at allIt draws whichever wall is currently selected, so it follows your last click rather than your intention. Blank means either that wall has nothing on it yet, or it has been hidden.FixClick the wall you want in the top view — the wall band itself, not a cabinet standing in front of it. For a wall that should be there and is not, the wall list chooses which walls appear.Type or say“Which wall is the elevation showing?”
• The base cabinet has lost its toe kick and its legsLift a floor cabinet more than six inches off the floor and it stops being a floor cabinet: the kick and the legs stop drawing, because at that height it reads as a wall-hung box — which is exactly what a floating vanity is.FixLift it six inches or less and the kick comes back. If you want it high and still want a kick, drop it down and raise the toe-kick height instead.Type or say“How far off the floor is the cabinet I have selected?”
• The 3D view is slow, choppy or feels stuckThere are four quality levels — 1 Smooth orbit, 2 Fast, 3 Standard and 4 HD — and the view starts on 1, the lightest. If it has been clicked higher since, a big design can crawl.FixClick the Quality button back down to 1 or 2, then right-click it to lock the level so a stray click cannot change it. Only the detail drawn changes, never the design.Type or say“The 3D view is crawling — what should I turn down?”
• You went looking for a bulk head and found the wrong oneTwo objects carry that name: the soffit that fills the gap to the ceiling above a run of wall cabinets, and a free-standing shaped bulkhead you draw in the top view.FixDecide which you mean first — the controls are in different places.Type or say“A dropped ceiling over the island — which of the two is that?”
• You cannot shift the plan around, or it slid when you did not ask it toMoving the view is not a left-drag — dragging empty space sweeps a selection box, which is why the plan appears nailed down. Three gestures move it: two fingers on a laptop trackpad, a middle-button drag with a wheel mouse, or the space bar held down while you drag. A pinch or the wheel zooms. Whichever you use, nothing in the kitchen has moved — you are sliding the window, not the design, and the item numbers stay exactly where they were.FixHold the space bar and drag: that one pans on any machine, mouse or not. If a plain scroll behaves like the wrong device — the wheel sliding the plan, or the trackpad zooming when you wanted to slide — the plan-view settings carry a Pan & Zoom Input switch with Auto, Mouse and Trackpad.Type or say“I am on a laptop with no mouse — how do I move the plan?”

Choose which walls show · 1:51

Two more that are modes rather than bugs. Editing in 3D requires the planner’s Edit 3D mode — ask Emma, in a Do it for me call, to move something there and her tools switch it on themselves rather than refusing, and she mentions it once, so nothing moves behind a silent change of mode. And if you cannot see inside a cabinet, the doors are shut: with Edit 3D on, press O and every door and drawer swings open — or just that cabinet’s, if one is selected — and press it again to close them. The fridge and dishwasher doors do not open.

Type or say “Which view am I in, and what is selected?”

Sign-in, saving, and the ten-step undo

The stakes change here. Everything above wastes a few minutes; the things below can lose an afternoon.

Start with the way in, because it changed. Opening the planner shows a sign-in card first, and it offers four ways in on the first screen: Google, Continue with Apple, an email code — six digits sent to your inbox, no password to invent — and Try it as a guest. All free, no card. A guest gets the same design tools, AI Design included, and can save up to two designs, kept for seven days after the last visit; an account keeps them and follows you to any computer you sign in from — up to ten designs on a free account, more with a membership, and at the limit you delete an old one in Load before a new one will save. Which sets up the three ways work goes missing, all preventable.

• The session ran outA signed-in session renews itself every time you use the planner and lapses only after thirty days away from that browser; a guest session is shorter. When it does lapse, the next Save asks you to sign in again. A greyed-out Export is something else: the design has no name yet.FixYour work on screen is not lost — sign back in and save. If the tab closed first, the planner kept a draft: the next time you open it, the start screen offers Unsaved · continue. That is a safety net, not a save, so name and save the design once you are back. For a greyed-out Export, click — not saved — at the left of the tool strip, name the design and save it.Type or say“Am I signed in, and is this design saved under a name?” The statement she reads answers both in one line.
• You are working as a guestA guest can keep up to two designs, and they are kept for seven days after your last visit. That is a trial rather than storage: a guest design is in no account you can sign in to from another computer.FixSign in with Google, Apple or an email code on this device while the guest session is still open, and the designs you saved as a guest move into the account and travel with you.Type or say“What happens to my guest designs when I sign in?”
• You undid one step too many, or one too fewUndo walks back the last ten changes and no further, and redo walks the same ten forward again — a deliberate cap, since the planner keeps ten snapshots so a large scene does not eat your browser’s memory. Older edits cannot be undone by any means.FixTreat ten as the real number it is. Before anything drastic — clearing the room, a fresh AI Design run, pulling four cabinets out to see how the run reads — save first.Say“Undo that.” It takes back the last change whoever made it, mouse included.

Save and Save As · 2:53

Say “Save this as Plan B, then tell me what I have saved.”

It said no: what each refusal actually means

A refusal is not an error. Every message below is the planner telling you the truth about something it cannot do — which is what you want, since the alternative is software that quietly does something adjacent and lets you find it three days later in a quote.

The first two rows come from the same place, and it is not the language model. Asking what to do next — typed, out loud, or with the AI Suggestion button — runs the planner’s own deterministic step logic over your layout, and it returns exactly one of three things: a recommendation naming one cabinet, which wall and where, with the reason; a question it needs answered first; or a statement that it is blocked and why. By default it works in kitchen-design order — sink, stove, fridge, corner, then the gaps — never recommends the same corner twice, and treats everything you have placed as locked. Once the base and tall run is done, it carries on to the wall cabinets on the walls you picked. Its questions — a sink, stove or fridge not placed yet, a corner to choose — are answered on screen, not by voice: place those three with the mouse, or click the choice in the AI Suggestion panel (on the 3D toolbar with Edit 3D on), then ask again. How it decides is a chapter of its own.

One more refusal rather than a fault: the CM8 and LS4 top mouldings and the SLR8 light rail are stocked only in White Shaker and Grey Shaker, so with a wood-grain or gloss door the planner uses whichever of the two is closer rather than inventing a colour. A custom-painted Shaker door is the exception — those mouldings are painted to match.

Type or say “Read me the last message the app showed me — I clicked it away.”

When to stop debugging

There is a point where carrying on costs more than asking, and it arrives sooner than most people let it. Our rule of thumb is three checks and about two minutes: press Escape, work out which view owns the selection, have the last message read back to you. If the behaviour still matches nothing on this page, stop.

Before anything else, though — save. With undo ten changes deep, poking at a confusing afternoon with no named copy to come back to is how it becomes a lost one.

Then pick the right door, because four different things get called “the planner is broken”:

• The software is confusing youClicks landing wrong, things not selecting, something not drawing where you expect. This page — then the full tour of the designer if you want the whole map rather than the symptom.
• The assistant will not start, or drops outThe button never lights up, the microphone never goes live, the call ends after a quiet stretch. The troubleshooting chapter covers all of it, including why a “Just talk” call hangs up after fifteen quiet seconds, and why a “Do it for me” call ends on the same fifteen seconds but waits for the next whole minute of the call to do it.
• You want to know what she can and cannot changeEvery command, every refusal, and why there is no swap. The command reference.
• Real cabinets are misbehavingDoors out of line, a drawer that catches, a gap at the wall. Nothing on this page applies. Chapter: fixing what went wrong — screws rather than software.

If it is a genuine bug rather than a setting, the “Need a human?” link in Emma’s typing panel puts it in front of somebody at Flip Kitchen, and so does a message to FlipKitchen Support, pinned at the top of Contacts in Chats & contacts (in Chrome). Tell them what you clicked and what happened instead — those two sentences beat a paragraph of description, because they are what someone can reproduce.

One last honest note. Voice calls are not recorded: the audio goes from your browser straight to the speech provider, never reaches us, and no transcript is kept. If you want a record of a conversation, type it — typed conversations are kept. The privacy page states it plainly.

Type or say “I have tried everything on the list and it still does it — what would you check?”