Can't Apply Appearance to Group

[matthew_6336]

I’m trying to apply the same appearance from one object to a group of objects, but the appearance only applies to one piece of the group instead of the whole thing. How do you do this? When I alt-drag an appearance, it only applies to the singular part of the group of objects that I release the click on.

[Monika Gause]

Please share a demo file that contains the appearances and the objects in question. 

And please describe what exactly you are doing.