Participant

Question

The colors in my character styles delete themselves.

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
June 14, 2023
2 replies
610 views

Hello,

I use character styles throughout multiple projects, and when I import the styles and requisite colors, the styles work perfectly. However, when I close and reopen Illustrator, often the colors in the character styles are gone. That is, instead of "Fill Color: hydro, Tint: 100%", it's replaced with "Fill Color: [None]"

I have multiple character styles with the same color, e.g. I have rivers and lakes with different character styles, but they both use the "hydro" color. Sometimes rivers lose their colors, but lakes keep it, sometimes the other way around. There seems to be no logic behind what loses the color when, except that they DO lose color sooner or later.

I do have the necessary colors still in the document, the "hydro" color is in my pallette, and I'm able to get back the correct character style (including colors) if I reimport the styles every single time, but it's a pain.

At this point, I'm not sure if I'm missing something important, and I just need the right tips to get them working for good, or if it's just a bug that I have to deal with. If anyone has any insight, I would be grateful.

Illustrator Version 27.2, Windows 10 Enterprise, 21H2

J

Jamie30754315w4yl

Participant

This has been an issue since the beginning of time. Adobe will never fix it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-BG7miwib8

Monika Gause

Community Expert

I cannot replicate that in version 2025 with newly created character styles.

So either I'm doing something wrong or there is something being carried over by your character styles or the bug has been fixed.

J

Jamie30754315w4yl

Participant

Hi Monika - Thanks for looking at this. It's still a bug in 2025:
-Create a new document, write some text, style it (with a fill color other than black), and save this as a character style. save this document. close document.
-Create a new, blank document. write some text. LOAD character styles from first document. apply the imported character syle to the text. save this document and close.
-Re-open the second document. the text will have a black fill and the stroke and fill will have question marks on them in the color palette.

The work around is to import your character styles, style text. cut the text, paste the text, and then the style retains its attributes. The bug persists from CS2.

Doug A Roberts

Community Expert

Do you mean Graphic Style rather than Character Style?

Can you share a blank or example document that contains both the graphic style and the swatch?

E

Ethan24751328b6mwAuthor

Participant

Maybe that's the issue. What do graphic styles have to do with character styles? I'm using character styles to change the fonts, sizes, colors, etc. of my text, and graphic styles to change the width, color, and dashes of my lines and polygons.

E

Ethan24751328b6mwAuthor

Participant

Here's a new file I just made. I wrote some filler text, imported the character styles and color swatches and I styled it with the character style "Hydro: springs, wells, streams, etc.". It looked fine, but after opening again, it was black instead of the "hydro" blue that it should be.

Oops, I'm having issues actually uploading the file. It says: "The attachment's untitled.ai content type (application/postscript) does not match its file extension and has been removed.", and it won't accept .zip files either....

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