Inspiring

Question

Table Style colors not showing all swatches

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InDesign 21.6, MacOS Tahoe 26.7.1

I have Pantone swatches in my InDesign ranging from 100C-7771C, so roughly 6,000 or so. Perhaps that is the problem right there, I’m not sure.

When customizing seemingly any color in a Table Style, Table Border eg, my swatches display from 100C-4270. This leaves thousands of swatches missing and means any new swatch that I add, since they default to the bottom, do not show up.

A workaround to this are to move a new swatch all the way up to the top which is incredibly tedious when I have thousands of swatches to scroll past. You can also sort by name or swatch value which will change the list but still only show a set amount.

I’ve refrained from making a UserVoice as it may be uncommon to have thousands of swatches.. but interested to see if anyone else sees this behavior.

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Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

I downloaded your sample file and tested it in InDesign 21.5.1 (Windows), and I can see the swatches beyond PANTONE 4270 C in the Table Style colour dropdown without any issues.

So it doesn't appear to be a universal limit on the number of swatches InDesign can display, I can see the entire list right through to 7685 C.

I'm wondering if it's possibly an InDesign preferences issue, a document issue, or even something specific to version 21.6 on macOS.

A few things worth trying:

Create a completely new document, import the same ASE library and see if the issue persists.
Reset your InDesign preferences (back them up first).
Export the original document to IDML, reopen it and test again.
If possible, test the file on another machine or InDesign version.

If the same ASE library works in a new document, that would point towards something document-specific. If it happens in every document, I'd be more inclined to suspect preferences, the InDesign version or a macOS-specific issue.

Given that I can open your supplied file and see colours beyond your reported cutoff, I'm not convinced it's a hard limit in the dropdown. It looks more like something specific to your setup.

At least we've narrowed it down a little!

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Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

@Eugene Tyson There aren’t as many colors as the OP thinks are in the .ase file. I checked the uploaded .ase file two ways and they showed about 2200 colors. I suspect the OP was going by the beginning swatch Pantone number and the last Pantone number.

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David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

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Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

They’re screenshot shows they can’t get past the 4000 number - and I can. So it shows them all for me, and there’s no limit to the swatches from what I can see. No idea why they can’t get past the 4000 number.

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rob day

Community Expert

Hi @graphics_4075 , Does selecting all of the swatches and setting the Swatch Options Color Type to Process make a difference? I assume you are doing this because newer versions of InDesign no longer offer current Pantone Color Book (.acb) files? The added memory overhead with a document that includes 6000 swatches would be significant.

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graphics_4075Author

Inspiring

You are correct in your assumption. Switching to process didn’t change anything, nor did grouping them like @Eugene Tyson recommended. AFAIK you cannot edit .ase files so uploading Solid Coated V4 gives me closer to ~4,000 swatches. I only have one color book loaded in.

Given the table color selector is a simple drop-down menu rather than an embedded panel makes me think that this is just the result of having more swatches than the InDesign team anticipated and there is a hard limit on how many items the drop-down can display. I’d rather cut down my excessive swatches than pay $90 to use a crappy plugin that makes my workflow a nightmare.

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Cheers

rob day

Community Expert

Here are the last PANTONE .acb files from 2018—copy them into your /Applications/Adobe InDesign 2025/Presets/Swatch Libraries folder, which should make them available in the New Color Swatch>Color Mode drop down:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/el9yecvjv7g9l9m2g4vg8/AKGH42FgfsMAFoODKdAR6og?rlkey=v09wnuy7c06l1hzzjy4e904tx&dl=0

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Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

Could be a limit to the amount of colours being able to display. Hard to know cos I never have this many colours in the swatches.
Can you provide a sample document with the swatches and the exact workflow to replicate?

If it is a limit, I wonder if grouping them in folders in the swatches, 0-999, 1000-1999, 2000-2999 etc.

That could be quick to setup and could solve your issue.

It’s a lot of swatches, very rare scenario.

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graphics_4075Author

Inspiring

Workflow is pretty much upload .ase file to InDesign swatches and click any color drop-down in the table menu (Table Setup, Row Strokes, Column Strokes, Fills). This should work in a new/any document but I included the original file I was working on.

If you are trying to set the color as 7685C like me when I found this issue, the list is cut off 4270C and doesn’t display any values after that. You have to drag the color allllll the way up in the swatches panel to be able to see it.

Either way like you said this seems like a understandable display limit considering my amount of swatches.

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Cheers

PANTONE Solid Coated-V4.ase

Swatch_test.indd

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

Your library as slightly less than 2140 colors, not 6000.

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David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

Are you sure there are not numbers being skipped? You can’t really go by the beginning and ending numbers. Adobe only came with about 2200 colors. I think the Pantone Connect extension only has about 2600 colors.

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David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

graphics_4075Author

Inspiring

Hi Dave, yes 100% numbers are being skipped, my rough estimate is likely very rough. That being said, irregardless of the actual quantity of swatches, I am still not getting the option to select from my entire swatch library. It seems the table color drop-down menu only displays a certain amount compared to the character style color page which is a dedicated panel that properly displays all swatches. Note the scroll bar in both images showing the list’s bottom yet different swatches.

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Cheers

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