Paste in Back grouping

[tjw100]

I have noticed that if I "Paste in Back" of of objects that Illustrator is grouping the pasted object with the selected objects. Very irritating since the pasted object acquires the selected objects attributes. 

I have been using Illustrator since Illustrator 88 and this is the first time I have seen this behaviour. 

Is this a new setting somewhere? 

Please lmk if anyone has a fix or comments

[tjw100]

Update...

The objects are not actually "Grouped", so to make matters worse, I can't ungroup them. If I apply a color to the pasted object, all objects pick up that color even though they are not grouped. 

On a slightly related matter (as it pertains to the grouping), when accessing the right click pull down menu, it appears on another screen. wtf

[Ton Frederiks]

Is there an effect applied to the layer you are pasting in?

[Doug A Roberts]

Can you replicate this in a new document with any set of objects?

If so, can you post the exact steps required to do this?

[tjw100]

My first troubleshooting step is to copy to a new document and clear appearance. For 2022, that had no effect on the issue.

I reverted to Illustrator 2021 which fixed the menu issue and for the most part cleared up the paste. 2021 had the same behavior until I cut and pasted and deleted the objects multiple times and ungrouped. That seemed to re-write enough of the file to let the UI interpret the code correctly. 

Illustrator has been a mess for awhile now. My primary job is systems architecture, so I don't use it enough to really dig in anymore. I just fiddle with it until it finally works. In extreme cases, I have to resort to recreating the vectors. When there is a viable alternative  I will be switching. The coding team needs to focus on clean bullet proof basic functionality and when that is fixed, go back to adding features that are neato, but not core to vector graphics. That't not going to happen since I have been saying that since CS 3.

[Monika Gause]

Screenshots of the Layers panel before and after would help.