I am unable to drag pattern swatches on to artboard to edit.  Help!!

Hi
I design patterns for a living so this is really annoying and has only started latley.  I create a pattern and drag it to the swatch palette and use it for fill.  I can then drag it out and edit it.  Then I save and close the document, reopen and I can no longer drag to swatch on to the artboard.  I have tried taking the fill in to a new document, loading the swatches in to another document.  I have moved the ai preferences on to my desktop and nothing is working.  I downloaded the trial version of CS5.1 and it still does it will the same swatches.  It only happens to some swatches though not all.  Please help!!  Thanks.
Gemma

Hi
Thanks very much for the workaround.  Would love to know why it happens, then I might be able to stop it happening in the first place!!
Many thanks
Gemma

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