Spot color error on open

[cmmonroe11]

Working on a rather large document that has a lot of logo/t shirt explorations. I do this kind of thing a lot and have never had a problem. I edited the file a bit yesterday and came in this morning and got the error message:

"Can't open the illustration. Cannot display overprint preview because the document contains more than 27 spot colors. Delete some spot colors or convert them to prociess colors and try again"

It would be one thing if I could go in and make some edits like the prompt suggestions, but when I open the file I am presented with a shell of my full file. Not as many fonts, most illustrations hidden, etc. And I can only select or edit images that I've imported, not able to select any of the vectors I've made. I would be panicking more, but in the open window/preview I do see a full screen of my work. Can anyone help out? Been using Illustrator for 10+ years and never gotten this error.

[Larry G. Schneider]

Can you get to the Swatch panel? Try to do what is asked there, then try reopening and see if it works.

[cmmonroe11]

I can get to the swatches. I removed all unused colors and converted spot to CMYK and saved a copy successfully. Problem is it doesn't bring back any of the lost SVGs/fonts.

[Monika Gause]

So you set up all those spot colors in the file?

What the preview shows is the PDF part of the file. Try and create a new file and then place the AI file in it. I'm wondering that you could save this file.

[cmmonroe11]

I didn't do anything differently than I normally do. To be honest I had never heard of spot colors and I don't think I inadvertently set any up. Is this a special process? Or is eye dropping a color from an image the same thing as creating a spot color?

I was able to drag in the document but it did not import the full file unfortunately, as I had a few pieces of art that were off of the artboard. Even if I am able to just retrieve the full PDF version that would be a win for me so I can recreate the MVPs.

[cmmonroe11]

The classic "Restart" seemed to do the trick... of course. Thanks for the replies!