Adobe InDesign CC 2017 – Color spectrum not available

A user of ours ran into the following issue: the issue is that the color spectrum tool does not allow selections. The colors are grayed out, and only some of the predefined colors are available.


To resolve this issue I did the following steps:

  • Closed InDesign.
  • Navigated to %appdata% Adobe / InDesign
  • Renamed the 12.0 folder to ~12.0 (This is to save the user’s custom prefs…)
  • Launched InDesign while holding down CTRL+ALT+SHIFT – a box will appear asking to reset prefs, I selected yes.
  • Closed InDesign – after it opened.
  • Deleted the new 12.0 folder.
  • Renamed the folder ~12.0 back to 12.0.
  • Launched InDesign and now the colors were back.

These steps will fix other boxes that are grayed out as well, not just the color spectrum. This is just the example that came across my desk recently.

Hope this helps!

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