Hi there,
I have a drawing in Adobe Illustrator, which contains many elements interconnected in it (there are small cartoon of people, arrows connecting between them, etc. and many other small cliparts). It opened perfectly in Inkscape. I am trying to use each element separately, but CAN'T SELECT ALMOST ANYTHING SEPARATELY. If I am lucky, sometimes I double click on one of the elements and it gets selected and therefore movable. However, most of the time what gets selected is THE WHOLE THING, or small mini-elements from an object, but not the whole object (For instance, if I try to select a person, what gets selected is only his hair, or his jacket, but I can't simply mark the person and select it all). It's driving me crazy, pls help!!!!

clarification: when I said "what gets selected is THE WHOLE THING what I meant is THE WHOLE INKSCAPE PAGE.

I'm not positive, but I think images from AI, when opened with Inkscape, have the whole thing Grouped. Select it and look at the status bar. Does it say "Group of ...."? If so, try Object menu > Ungroup (or the button on command bar) once. After you ungroup once, look again at the status bar. If I understand the general content of the file, it sounds like there may be other groups in there, which you might want to keep as groups. It's possible to have groups of groups. If you're sure that you want everything ungrouped, you could click Ungroup many times, until the status bar says "No more groups to ungroup". In certain situation this could appear to alter the file. So watch closely as you click. If you do see something change, let us know and we can help you sort it out. Usually it would be some objects coving up others, or something like that.

What's happening when you double-click, is that you enter the group. Generally you would not want to enter the group, but there are reasons why you might want to, which is why it's possible at all. Anyway, by double-clicking, you've selected something inside the group. You can move it, but it stays in the group. You could still work on the file while keeping everything grouped. I don't think you probably want to, but you could. After you double-click and enter the group, start using the Tab key to select items individually within the group.

Thanks so much Brynn, I did as you said and now being able to select the objects separately. Have no words to thank you!!

Brynn, it's me again...
I got 4 .ai files and with three of them, your advice worked smoothly.
With the fourth file, for some reason, this process of ungrouping gets stuck.
I ungroup and ungroup from one big group (the whole page) and until I see the different objects selected. Then it's strange. When I try to move a certain object, it will move everything less the object's black background. If it's an arrow for instance, when I move it, what is left of it in the original position is the arrow, completely black. I can't figure out how to move the WHOLE object.

Your guidance again will be much appreciated! Thank you in advance!

Hhmmm, I'm not sure what might be happening, without having the file to look at. But that's one reason why I cautioned against ungrouping until there are no more groups. It sounds like the arrow might have been composed of more than one object, and grouped to keep them all together.

If it's too late to undo and get it grouped like it was before, you can probably regroup it yourself -- probably (it's hard to say for sure without having the file to look at). Click on the arrow, the hold Shift + Alt + click again. Now you will have both pieces selected. Then Object menu > Group (or command bar button).

Depending on how the image was drawn, it's possible that the other part of the object, the part the doesn't move, is not directly below the top part. If click, then shift + alt + click doesn't select the right object, then it's going to be kind of tricky. I would suggest using Alt + click until you have the lower object selected. Then release Alt. Now hold Shift and click on the top object. This will have the proper 2 objects selected, and now you can Group them.

Let us know how it goes