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Vernox
Inspiring
February 11, 2026
Question

Add/Merge Swatch Dialogs No Longer Shows

  • February 11, 2026
  • 4 replies
  • 46 views

This dialog no longer appears when I paste swatches, how to turn it back on?

Dialog

 

    4 replies

    Kurt Gold
    Community Expert
    Kurt GoldCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 11, 2026

    Unfortunately, in documents with spot colour swatches the Swatch Conflict dialog only appears when pasting objects to which an identically named global process swatch is applied (and vice versa).

     

    That's not a new behaviour. It's been there for many years and I'd call the auto-merging unexpected and possibly harmful behaviour.

     

    I think in old versions of Illustrator (probably Illustrator 9 and below), it worked as you would expect it.

    V
    VernoxAuthor
    Inspiring
    February 11, 2026

    I must be mis-remembering then, I was working on the files that sparked this query just a few months ago and swore I’d been dismissing that dialog on the spot colour pastes. All good, thanks for looking into it.

    V
    VernoxAuthor
    Inspiring
    February 11, 2026

    Two sample files, both with “Spot 1” swatches. Pasting a shape using the spot ink from one file to the other just replaced the pasted definition with the file definition.

     

     

    Monika Gause
    Community Expert
    Monika GauseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 11, 2026

    I can reproduce that, but according to the manual it is the expected behaviour: https://helpx.adobe.com/ie/illustrator/using/using-creating-swatches.html

     

    So if you want it to behave differently, please make a feature request: https://illustrator.uservoice.com 

    V
    VernoxAuthor
    Inspiring
    February 11, 2026

    Spot colour swatches, same name but different colour.

    Monika Gause
    Community Expert
    Monika GauseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 11, 2026

    Can you share example ai documents that use the affected swatches? (just some rectangles in them)

    Monika Gause
    Community Expert
    Monika GauseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 11, 2026

    So you are pasting content that uses global swatches that have the same names like swatches already used in the document?

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