UI Text Won't Change Color in Unity 5

Question

In Unity 5 on Windows 10, I try to change the text color from the Inspector and in scripts, but the color won't change. Here are some screenshots of my Text objects open in the inspector, with there colors set to red and white, but staying the default black in the Scene and Game windows:

Here are the lines of code I am using to change the color

var textColor = beatBestTime ? "#FF0" : "FFF";

scoreText.text = "Time " + FormatTime (timeElapsed) + "\n<color="+textColor+">Best " + FormatTime (bestTime)+"</color>";

which I can verify are being run, but the color remains the same!

Answer 1

I got stuck on this same thing in this tutorial. My fix was to assign the font material to the text component's material directly underneath where you change it red.

Answer 2

Like user @JaredBrowne says, just go ahead and add the material that was created when you made the "Create Edible Copy".

Answer 3

If it's a bitmap font, you need to make sure that the letters in the sprite sheet are white so that colors will be applied correctly with Unity's default text shader. Most tools, including Unity's "Create Editable Copy," create black letters, but this will lead to the exact symptoms you describe. If you have an existing sprite sheet with black letters, you can just do a quick color replacement in your editor of choice.