pantone colors in Illustrator 2024

[gerhard5CC2]

Hi I need step by step help for an Idiot (me) how to get Pantone colors back into Illustrator 2024

[Bobby Henderson]

If you have back-up copies of the Pantone+ ACB files you simply copy them to the clipboard and then paste them into the proper Illustrator program files folder.

On the Windows platform the location is:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator 2024\Presets\en_US\Swatches\Color Books

[Ton Frederiks · Accepted solution]

You can have multiple versions of Illustrator installed.

There is still one version that you can download that has the libraries.

Install an older version of Illustrator: 2023 (27.0), this is the last version that has the old Pantone Color books.

In the Creative Cloud app select Apps > All Apps > Illustrator > click the 3 dots …  next to the Open button >  click Other Versions and select 27.0

Go the Illustrator 2023 Application folder > Presets > (your language folder) > Swatches > Color Books > and make a copy of PANTONE+ Solid Coated.acb and PANTONE+ Solid Uncoated.acb

Keep them in a safe place and copy them to the same location in the Illustrator 2024 application folder.

[AJJ22656695e0lw]

old acb files are missing over a thousand swatches. even the v4 version is missing swatches. v5 is not public but an unofficial version was made here: https://github.com/aj90909/unofficial-pantone-solid-coated-2024-v5/tree/main

[Bobby Henderson]

Having the old ACB files in place will still allow any Pantone spot colors to work properly in Illustrator, even if newer spot colors are imported in artwork made by rival applications. Pantone V5 spot color swatches are included in the current versions of CorelDRAW and Affinity Designer. It's odd how Pantone isn't going after various other software developers, forcing them to remove Pantone spot color swatch books. I guess that's because they're having enough difficulty as it is making their "connect" subscription address Adobe applications.