Find and replace all instances of a PMS color

[PeterD-NJ]

When I first started out on my current project I accidentally used uncoated PMS colors instead of coated. Unfortunately there are a few stragglers left in at least 75 extremely complex Illustrator files, and they are causing "phantom" colors to show up in InDesign. I cannot get rid of them in ID, and I assume they're buried in one of the linked Illustrator .PDFs.

Is there ANY way, within Illustrator, to find specific colors and replace them. For example, find all instances of PMS 154U and replace with PMS154C, 185U for 185C, 165U for 165C, Purple U for Purple, C and so on with all 17 PMS colors. I did manage to fix the vast majority of them last year, but it's the stragglers that are giving me fits in InDesign. In that program, I can find a specific color if it was generated within InDesign, but not if it's embedded in a graphic. Can anybody point me in the right direction? It could be something as simple as an accidentally-generated 1cm-long line that's impossible to see or find without a color finder of some kind.

Please and thanks!

Here's my Swatches panel and there are a few 'U's in there, but how can I find where each one is?

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse · Accepted solution]

You don't need to find where it's used. To Replace the U spot with the C spot, use the Merge function in the Swatch panel. Make sure the C colour you want is in your swatches, select it, hold shift and select the old U colour so both are highlighted, then pull down Merge from top right. Done. The colour you want is the first colour you select.

[PeterD-NJ]

Will doing this update any and every instance of the unwanted color in the drawing? I might have used the "U" color in 200 or more instances, converted 199 of them, but missed one miniscule item, as an example.

[Kurt Gold]

Normally, it should do that. You may check it with the Separation Preview palette.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Yes, In fact, you can replace as many colours as you want in one go, as long as the one you want to keep is the first one you select. If should also affect any locked/hidden objects

[PeterD-NJ]

That got it done; thanks! I'm still seeing phantom colors in InDesign, but at least these ones are fixed.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

They will stay in InDesign swatches. They won't be automatically deleted even if you purge your Illustrator files. You can select them and delete them from InDesigns swatch panel (e.g. use Select Unused Colours), although if you can't, the colour is still being used somewhere. It may not matter. You can use InDesign's Separation Preview to see if and where the colour might be used to narrow down the culprit. In any case, unless you are intending to output a spot colour job, it's a moot issue.

[packaging specialist]

The second way.
In the swatch window, find the Ink Manager in the drop-down menu. Using the Ink Alias option you can replace a given paint with another one. The samples will not disappear, but look at the output preview.

[Ton Frederiks]

That looks more like an InDesign solution. Illustrator has no Ink Manager.

[PeterD-NJ]

My logo? With respect, I think you might need to re-read the original post. This is about finding rogue PMS colours in a complex drawing and converting them to the correct ones since they are giving fits in InDesign (colors that can't be deleted), which can slow down or affect big InDesign documents.