Shapes Expanded

[Lissa5EEE]

Hey Guys, please tell me someone can help. I am a product developer and create a bunch of patterns myself on illustrator. Every now and then I'll create a pattern and after I save it, I then drag that swatch onto my artboard to then go into the layers, to then add the background color. However, everytime I try to drag and drop the swatch to the artboard, a message pops up and says  "shapes expanded" and it won't open at all. I try and see if I can redo the whole thing from scratch and the same thing keeps happening. I've also tried other swatches and they work perfectly fine, but when I try to drag mine out, I get that message. Please, anyone help  haha google and youtube doesn't have anything on this. 

[Ton Frederiks]

To add a background color for an object filled with a pattern, you could use the Appearance panel and add another fill below the pattern fill.

Or you could double click the pattern swatch and use the Pattern maker to add a fill below the pattern.

But that is not your problem.

Can you share a file with the pattern that causes the problem?

CC file sharing, DropBox, WeTransfer, Google...