I have the same problem and i think i found one way to get around. The File i opened is in RGB MODE created in autocad (maybe the cose of the problem)
I select the text with te Direct selection tool creating a zip selection on the artbord cose the direct click over won't catch (also the T Tool won't recognise it as text for some strange reason) and from the left corner of the Tool palette i click the No color Fill Box.
And then i refill the text with one of the colors i want from the Cmyk or RGB palette or just insert the hex Code of an specific color by double clicking the fill color box at the tool palette. I have this kind of problem when opening PDF generated in Autocad projects.(maybe the cose of the problem).

The second solution is to select it with the menu, Object> Select Object> All Text. and then cut them and paste in New Document .Just Cut and Paste. The new one Textes created won't have the problem with the changing of color.

i have the same problem this is just to mutch to do to change a color wtf ?

Im having this annoying issue at the moment but only with one color - blue. It just will not pick the colour I choose. What can I do to fix this??

Yeah... what the f. Having the same issue, this is absurd! This "fix" is useless... anyone got a real fix?
What is actually happening at Adobe, feels like its circling the drain these days... Anyone know decent Illustrator alternative, getting sick of these constants bugs......

I am having this problem, Mac OS is current, Big Sur 11.6, Illustrator freshly installed. I get to the Character Color Panel and I cannot change the color. No eyedropper or other tool or window appears to allow me to change the color.

sERIOUSLy How is it possible that such a routine function is broken. this is maddening. get it together. Illustrator first shipped in 1985. Get It Together.

Yes, this and other things are work arounds this really annoying issue. And it's not just text, but it seems to happpen with text moreso. But the fact is we never used to have to do this until a few versions ago. I think most of us don't even keep the appearances panel open, so having to do multiple steps to fill a color when it used to be just tap the eyedropper, done. - whats weird is why it only sometimes behaves like this - I've followed this and multiple threads on the subject and nobody has been able to explain this inconsistency.

How to move the fill on top of appearance

I think it's more of an unfortunate change in UX than a bug. Also it's not just text - you'll find the same comments around shapes. I've been an Illustrator user for 25+ years, and use the eye dropper several times a minute, for text styling and object colorizing. (I rarely use the appearance palette for much other than trying to troubleshoot why the eye dropper no longer functions as it did for the first 20 years of using illustrator). There must be something about the workflow that the Illustrator team somehow expects us to be doing differently., that has never been explained well in the several different forums where this is a topic. I can't imagine a tools function would be changed from something that just always-worked-as-expected, to... "it works like this... except... if it doesn't... then open up this lesser-used palette, and drag the order of things around, and/or go the little menu in the top corner and select Clear Appearance, and THEN it will probably work". ....what are we missing?

Ann

I am experiencing the same issues in the latest version of Illustrator with what are some of the most important and regularly used tools . Having just spent over $300 on a year's subscription I'm not happy.

Having the same issue with the most updated Illustrator. I can't change the text to the shade of green that I want. Whenever I select the correct shade it reverts back to the previous shade. How can I change the colour without it automatically reverting back? I am trying to make the text colour the shade in the top right of the colour box but it always just reverts back to the shade more to the centre. Can change to any other colour but not that shade.

This helped me

I'm also having this issue. Dragging the fill below the characters in the Appearance panel fixes it, but this is a major disruption to workflow and unacceptably inefficient. It means that the eyedropper tool effectively no longer works on text regardless of the manual Appearance panel workaround. I hope this bug is fixed in the next update.