Illustrator Pattern fill issue

[Mahoney1]

Hi All, I have an ai file with what appears to be a pattern fill in one part of the design, I need to edit this fill to change the colour. When I select the object filled with the pattern the fill icon in the colours panel has the pattern in it but the fill pattern doesnt appear in the swatches panel. What sort of fill is this and how do i edit it?

[barbara_a]

At the bottom of the Swatches panel, check if ALL swatches are showing.

If all swatches are showing and the pattern swatch is not visible, you may need to close and restart Illustrator. If that doesn't work, try resetting the Preferences file. (In Preferences > General, there is a button to reset preferences.)

By the way, even if the pattern is not showing in the Swatches panel, you can still change the color by selecting the object that has the pattern fill and clicking on the Recolor Artwork icon in the Options bar.

[Kurt Gold]

It may be a so-called "Unnamed Pattern".

Unnamed patterns will be created when one deletes a pattern swatch that is applied to at least one object in the document. You can check it in the Document Info palette: Select the object, go to the flyout menu of the palette and turn on "Pattern Objects". If it is an unnamed pattern the palette will display, well, "Unnamed Pattern".

If you want to convert an unnamed pattern into a regular pattern swatch, you can just select the object, go to the Swatches palette and create a new pattern swatch. After that you can edit the pattern swatch.