Inspiring

Question

Copying Hex number only happens about 50% of time

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
September 29, 2023
5 replies
1692 views

What is up with this? Its being going on across mulitple Macs and versions of Illustrator but just about EVERY time I go to copy a hex color code from the Color window nothing goes to the Mac clipboard and paste is just nothing. A second attempt at exact same process will usually be successful. However, pretty sure that on more than one occassion its taken 3 attempts. REALLY don't like having to repeat myself.

Bug

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clif_CROPAuthor

Inspiring

I FINALLY have some understanding on WHY and WHEN I'm having this issue!

I have some client colors set as Swatch Presets / Swatch Groups. These colors when seen in "Recent Colors" or Swtacth Tiles will show a white triangle in the bottom right corner of their swatch. If an object is colored by one of these swatches, the HEX field is completely locked. Not only can you not copy and paste to it, you can't type in any numbers or text in that field.

Now, ideally if you changed that Hex number it would make it a new color and would swap from showing the name of the swatch to the CMYK or RGB value sliders. While I get that its a protected the color, the action is blocking isn't to change what the saved swatch its to change to color fill of that object. (or stroke). Right now, the only work around seems to be to change the objects color to a swatch that DOES NOT have the white triangle in the corner which will reactive the HEX color field for editing or being copy / paste-able.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

The triangle means your swatch is global. Having swatches not globals does not make a lot of sense in a lot of cases. So that is not the best idea. Probably you could just click on the red-green-blue striped button and then copy the HEX?

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clif_CROPAuthor

Inspiring

Absolutely @Monika Gause , was just testing after posting and thats a better work arounnd.

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atikhun_4613

Participant

Same here! It’s been happening for years, and it annoys me the most—especially whenever I copy and paste in After Effects or Premiere Pro and then have to go back to Illustrator 3–4 times just to make it work. It’s such a waste of time and completely disrupts my workflow. Can anyone fix this? Adobe, please address this bug!

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clif_CROPAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks for your post @atikhun_4613 , with only 2 upvotes on the post was wondering if just me but more likely, we are doing a workflow that others just don't do.

If you haven't already, make sure on your Mac that under Setttings > Privacy & Security > Screen & System Audio Recording that Illustrator is turned on to have access. Not sure why, but this seems to help since its somehow connected to the eyedropper tool. Not that I'm using the eye dropper tool each time to get the Hex color to show in the Color window.

One other troubleshooting bit. Just last week I copied a Hex from Illustrator. Went to Premiere or After Effects (don't recall which) and hit Paste in the Hex field and got NOTHING. For fun I hit CMD+V a SECOND time and the correct Hex number appeared. Thought that was odd but in the future I'll be attempting a second paste before going back to copy the Hex a second or 3 or 4th time.

Hope that helps some!

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comphead

Participant

I've been dealing with this problem for months now and it's been a massive pain. I use hex codes to copy colours around quickly between programs and documents so I run into it dozens of times a day.

Fyi I only have creative cloud and google drive running in the background on my Mac most of the time so I don't think much could be interferring with the copy-paste function.

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clif_CROPAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks for posting your experience! I have it on both my Macs and I think its widespread but that most don't realize its an issue since its not a part of their workflow. I also can't see how it would be "user error" I do the same processes in other apps, especially other Adobe apps, and do not have the same problem.

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clif_CROPAuthor

Inspiring

I'm still having this issue, on both my Macs. I have no issue in any other Adobe app and I've been using Macs for 40 years now so not a user related issue...I know how to copy and paste.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Several applications interfere with Copy and Paste. Sadly this also includes antivirus.

You might want to turn off everything and launch only Illustrator.

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clif_CROPAuthor

Inspiring

Its not only between applications, I've gotten it to glitch just while staying in Illustrator and I don't have any antivirus installed. End of the day, there is just something different about the hex field in the color window. As Ton mentioned above, even if you select a color value above it, RGB color or CMYK color and tab through the other vaules they each highlight but when you tab again and it selects the hex color value it doesn't select the "text" as it does in the other fields.

This issue as always been intermittent and not always reproduceable. Once it unglitches it works fine for awhile before breaking again.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

I think it is because the hex field has focus, but the number is not highlighted.

If you double click the number it gets a blue highlight and you can copy it.

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clif_CROPAuthor

Inspiring

I would understand that and could see how that would throw someone. I use dark mode but when I first click on the hex color the cursor will appear between the hex wherever I click, a double click from there will highlight the full hex in gray highlight and then I hit CMD C which should be the expectation.

The oddest thing is that it will usually mess up the first time, have to try again and then it will work AND will continue to work as expected for subsiquent attempts. So just sitting here doing it over and over again is fine. But whatever it is, time going by, computer going idle, switching apps no idea what but that at some future point even in the same day it will glitch again since it can be a good amount of time between hex copies.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Double click seems to work for me, wonder why it sometimes does not work for you.

I use the Tab key in the Color Panel to go to and highlight the next field.

But that behaviour stops at the Hex field...

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