Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 9/23/2008

Question
Here is my problem: I do instructional illustrations for installation instructions for air conditioning systems for cars. Some of the drawings or real detailed of engines, pulleys, a/c lines etc. We have existing drawings that we have done in Corel that we sometimes save as AI files and work on. Sometimes will working on a file all the colors in the swatches pallete disappear. The only thing left there is  the no fill "none" box(white box red line thru it) and another grey box with what looks like a circle with crosshairs. What gives where did the colors go? I can go into open swatch library and open up "Basic CMYK" but then it is a separate floating box and when docked with swatches it is on it's own seperate tab. Never have to do that all the other times. Those colors are normally under the swatches tab.
Thanks

Answer
Hi Jason,

This is a common problem and is caused by opening a file that was not created in AI. This will always happen. I am assuming that you do not want to place these files in AI so, the only and easiest way to solve this is to copy and paste your image into a new document with the full palette.

Thanks

Kevin