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Known Participant
April 12, 2021
Answered

Buggy hidden/invisible/non-existent appearances

  • April 12, 2021
  • 4 replies
  • 1148 views

Sometimes I find that newly created live text objects or other objects have appearances on them that I can't see in the Appearance tab but I know that some form of extra appearance exists (unless it's a bug) because going to the top menu and trying to do Object > Expand... won't work. This is because the option is greyed out and instead Object > Expand Appearance is available. When I click this I can see nothing changes in the Appearance tab, and yet Object > Expand... becomes available again.

 

The existence of these hidden appearances actually causes problems with scripts I write in regards to dealing with appearances in various ways.

 

Repoducing this problem is very easy as all you need to do is create some default text with no appearance, then with the text selected use the eyedropper tool to click on the text. You will notice in the Layers panel that the object's selection circle(if that's what it is called?) becomes filled with grey indicating it has an appearance even though the Appearance panel shows nothing has changed. This appearance has materialized out of nowhere.

 

This has to be a bug right?

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Kurt Gold

Thanks for the file.

 

I can reproduce the behaviour (using the eyedropper as per your description), but only in the Windows version of Illustrator.

 

Apparently it's a bug. You may report it at the Uservoice section of this forum.

 

4 replies

Kurt Gold
Kurt GoldCorrect answer
Community Expert
April 13, 2021

Thanks for the file.

 

I can reproduce the behaviour (using the eyedropper as per your description), but only in the Windows version of Illustrator.

 

Apparently it's a bug. You may report it at the Uservoice section of this forum.

 

ariffjeffAuthor
Known Participant
April 13, 2021
Kurt Gold
Community Expert
April 13, 2021

Can you share a sample Illustrator file (.ai)?

 

ariffjeffAuthor
Known Participant
April 13, 2021

Here's a google drive link to an .ai file since attaching it directly just gave me an error saying the contents of the file don't match .ai even though it's just two text objects.

 

Inside are two different text objects. One is just some normal default text. The other is text that I have selected and clicked on with the eye dropper tool to give it the strange invisible/pseudo-appearance.

Ton Frederiks
Community Expert
April 12, 2021

I cannot reproduce this in 25.2.1 Mac, the layer target button stays unchanged.

ariffjeffAuthor
Known Participant
April 13, 2021

I get this behavior 25.2.1 on Windows. I forgot macOS existed ha.

ariffjeffAuthor
Known Participant
April 12, 2021

I will also call these schrodinger's appearances.