Colour swatch not "unused", but 0 instances found

[defaultpm1yhii80xup]

I'm tidying up the colour palette in a multi-page document and there's one colour that is not being grabbed by the "Select All Unused" tool, but when I use the "Find Color" tool in the Find/Change dialogue, it's telling me that there are 0 instances found. 

As you can see in the Find/Change screenshot, I've selected locked layers, locked stories, hidden layers/objects, parent pages, and footnotes. I've also unlocked all of the layers in the laters panel just in case. Same result when I searched "All documents" instead of just "this document".

I checked all of the paragraph, character, object, table, and cell styles and none use this color. 

Help? 

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

It looks like your errant white is currently the Fill colour in your palette, so is "in use"?

[defaultpm1yhii80xup]

Hey Brad, thanks for the reply. I don't understand what you mean, would you mind explaining? 

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

It was just a thought. Although I've since tested that theory and that doesn't seem to be it.

If you made a copy of the file, deleted all the content/items on master pages, does it allow a deletion then?

If it doesn't change anything, share this "empty file" here, and we can take a look.

You could always chnage the definition of the colour to something vibrant so you can "see" if anything is using it. 😉

 

[pixxxelschubser]

A shot in the dark:

Could the color possibly be "hidden" in a placed file?

[Peter Spier]

Are you able to temporarily redefine it as a spot color? That might allow you to find it via preflight or through separations preview.

[defaultpm1yhii80xup]

I tried clearing out the master pages and it didn't change anything. There are two other off-whites in the palette and the file is a multi-page coffee table book with lots of graphics, so visually checking the file isn't really realistic. The file is also many years old and has been had a lot of different people working in it, so it's a bit of a bees nest. 

Peter, thank you for those suggestions, I didn't think of trying that! I was able to change it to a spot colour, but it didn't show up in Preflight scan (even with PB and non-printing objects selected) or Separations Preview.

Am I safe to delete the swatch? Any idea why this might be happening? 

[pixxxelschubser]

If the color is hidden in a placed file, IMHO it is not possible to delete it.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

"Am I safe to delete the swatch?"

If you are able to delete it, yes indeed. Normally, unused colours will delete without any squawking about it being in use. At worse, it will ask you to replace it with another, which actually may help you track down where it is.