I’d say it’s hard to believe that Epic has not fixed this issue after 8+ years, but I think we all know how little they care about fixing quality of life stuff like this… Here we are, 2023, UE 5.2.1 and we STILL can not replace references to Materials with Material Instances. PLEASE FIX!
The solution to use the “replace reference” UI (which is a HORRIBLE UI/UX) is also a pain if you have a large project and your materials are not in the same browser window.
Epic, PLEASE start fixing this stuff. There are so many forum posts like this for issues that are slowing down/holding back users that go completely ignored for MANY years. This has to stop at some point.