Ai CC 2020: No swatches, only palette

[A New Earth]

Hi all.

When I click on the swatch icon, only no fill and something else. So I have to click on palette to choose a color. But I want to pick a color from the swatches. How can I do this?

Thanks in advance.

[Doug A Roberts · Accepted solution]

Click on the library button at the bottom of the swatches panel.

Open the swatch library you want to use.

Select all the swatches in it and go to 'Add to Swatches' in the panel menu.

[A New Earth]

The 'Add to Swatches' is greyed out.

[Doug A Roberts · Accepted solution]

You need to select some (or all) of the swatches.

[A New Earth]

Yes, you are correct. Thanks! 🙂

[Ton Frederiks]

You probably opened an image file or imported another file type that does not contain swatches.

[A New Earth]

This is true. But I traced/inked over the image, so shouldn't that give me a swatches to fill in the new image? But I think you are onto the right track, so I just created a new blank document, dragged the trace into the blank document and the swatches came back in the new document for me to use. Thanks.

[Doug A Roberts]

"so shouldn't that give me a swatches to fill in the new image?"

Swatches are document-specific; if there are no swatches to start with, you need to add them.