Eyedropper tool not functioning — has letter T icon and just picks up black

Question

Since updating to Illustrator 28.1 my Eyedropper tool no longer works.

It is stuck with a letter T next to it (see attached), and only picks up solid black when clicking on any element. I have double clicked the icon in the tool bar and turned everything off apart from fill and stroke and still no joy.

I restarted illustrator holding down Shift, Alt, and Command to reset my settings but no luck.

Any ideas?

ComeHitherDesign · Accepted Answer

Thanks for the hint. I tried a new empty documeny and it didn't happen. I've now figured it out — I had a top layer, which contained some text, but it is locked and set to "do not print". Despite being on a lower, active layer, Illustrator was trying to select and sample from the top, locked layer. When I made this top layer invisible, the eyedropper returns to normal…

A bug that needs fixing I suspect?

Doug A Roberts · Answer

That's what it normally shows when hovering on a text element. Can you show your file including the full workspace and the layers panel? What's in it?

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