InDesign 17 Eyedropper tool not copying text styling

[Trevor5E5B]

InDesign 17 eye dropper won't copy text styles. When I copy text from an email to replace in my document and select the eye dropper tool, the little "t" beside the eye dropper doesn't appear when it hovers over existing text styles that I am trying to copy. I click once - THEN the little "t" appears - but when I click the text style I want to copy, it just unselects my highlighted text. This is infuriating. Please fix! Using Mac OS 12.0.1 Monterey iMac Pro.

[John Mensinger]

Hmmm...it's working here.

When I read your description of your attempt, it seems backward to me. I never use the eyedropper for styling text, but here's how it worked when I tested it just now:

Option #1:

1. Select the target text
2. Choose the Eyedropper
3. Click the source text
4. Source formatting applied to target

Option #2:

1. Choose the Eyedropper
2. Click the source text
3. Drag-select across the target text
4. Source formatting applied to target

If you double-click the Eyedropper, the Character Settings and Paragraph Settings options are checked, right?

[Barb Binder]

Hi @Trevor5E5B:

I'm not experiencing this issue as I understand it. Note that this video was taken on Big Sur (11.6) and InDesign 17. I won't upgrade the OS for a few weeks at least, and I will continue my layout work on 16.4 to give Adobe and Apple time to work out the bugs. I don't recommend updating everything the day the upgrades are released. 

~Barb

[Trevor5E5B]

Maybe Adobe shouldn't put out buggy software until it's been fully tested, but thank you for the helpful comment.

[Creamer Training]

If two people (now three) people are saying the tool works as expected, how is that a bug? 

[Trevor5E5B]

Adobe forums: I'm having an issue!
People on Adobe forums: I'm not having that issue, so you're not having an issue.

Congrats you're not having the issue! How is that helpful to anyone? Go troll somewhere else.

[Creamer Training]

No trolling. What it means is there is something unique to your system* that could be causing the problem. It could be a glitch during install, an OS conflict, improper usage, etc.  At this point, it would be hard to tell without more trial and error testing.

*When I say "your system", bear in mind that this could affect hundreds, of not thousands, of users. 

[John Mensinger]

No one said you weren't experiencing what you say you are.

"Buggy" implies that we all would be having the same problem, so reporting that we don't is indeed helpful to getting your issue diagnosed. That's the first thing we do here; try to reproduce your problem at our desks. When we can, maybe it confirms a suspected bug and comforts you in the knowledge that you're not alone. When we can't, at least that narrows it down to your installation on your system. Not quite as comforting, I know.

Have you tried resetting preferences?

[Ashutosh_Mishra]

Hi Trevor,

I agree with John. Resetting preferences should help with your concern.

Also let us know if you have this issue while working on a specific file? If that is the case, try saving the file as IDML & let us know if it helps.

Regards,

Ashutosh

[Creamer Training]

I normally use paragraph, character, and object styles--however, I just tested the tool and it works as expected. 

[clydeb51656905]

I have had this BUG for a few months now and never changed anything in my settings. Been using indesign for about 15 or 16 years... its kind of odd how a "Community Expert" doesnt even know what the word "bug" means...

[Lil28762706cfan]

I'm having same problem on Monterey12.6.3 - latest version of Indesign. Cannot copy text styles anymore with the eyedropper tool. Have selected all preferences, b

ut when I try to eyedrop text styles, it just outlines my text. @adobe has there been any updates to this glitch?

[defaultk3r9x9kb5ocq · Accepted solution]

I'm having issues with the eyedropper as well. It used to have text styling options, now...now I don't even know what it does. If I double click the icon to adjust settings, the only thing in the window that appears is a dropdown that says 'When applying colors:'

I want to be able to use the eyedropper to pick up/copy the text style complete with font, font size, font color, font style and apply it to another piece of text, like it used to do.

Now it doesn't seem to do anything to the target text that I can tell. 

[njkyippee]

I am having the same issue and its equally infuriating to me. What I found was that the issue was happening primarily when I attempted to sample from a text box that was grouped with another item. Once I ungrouped the pickup text box it worked correctly on the destination text. This is annoying because many of my layouts have grouped items and to manually ungroup everything and then eyedrop pretty much defeats the purpose of using the eyedropper as a fast/efficient way to style text... but there you have it. Adobe community, please don't start about how I should use paragraph styles—I already do that but there are slight modifcations over hundreds of pages and sometimes I just need to pick up the style I want FAST.

[Thy22831006p5fn]

It seems to work if you switch off any layers underneath

[SmshnDotCom]

YEPPPPP!!! Thank You! Only thing for me that worked... had a texture background locked in the background but as soon as i turned it off i could copy the text style with the eyedropper again... 

[shereel35532566]

Like others have said, the issue is intermittent. It used to work beautifully but has since become a daily struggle. In a 44-page document, I do the norm: highlight text (A), select Eyedropper, click styled text (B)—text (A) disappears. On another page in the exact same document, I use the same method and it works just fine. Move to another section in the same document, nada. The textbox could be all alone on the page so I'm not sampling anything else by mistake.

Like njkyippee sometimes I need to bypass set styles and quickly apply as I design. I'm forced to manually enter the desired text styling which just doesn't make sense with a program this powerful. I've uninstalled and reinstalled InDesign and I keep checking this forum to see if anyone has figured out a solution. The eyedropper settings has paragraph and charcter styles checked. I tried resetting through Preferences but don't see anything related to the eyedropper.

This impacts my professional work as I spend way too much time troubleshooting and doing workarounds (retyping a headline is exasperating). And how can I teach when it doesn't even work for me?! These days my demo to college students starts with, "Well, mine is buggy but it's supposed to do this…hopefully it works for you."

ADOBE, ARE YOU LISTENING?

[clydeb51656905]

im also having the same issue. When is a fix planned for this?