How to enable the "Auto Resize" function under the preferences and "Regional Text Options"?

Thanks for the detailed explanation and the code snippet.

From what you described, you’re trying to enable two related text behaviors:

1. Preferences → Text → “Automatically adjust the text size in the new area”
2. Text → Regional Text Options → “Auto Resize” (per text object setting)

At the moment, these are handled differently internally:

• The Preferences-level setting (auto-sizing for new text frames) can usually be toggled globally through app.preferences.
• However, the “Auto Resize” under Regional Text Options is typically not exposed as a global scriptable preference, and in many versions it is only available as a per-text-object property inside the UI.

That’s why your script:

app.preferences.getStringPreference('text/autoSizing');

may return a value, but doesn’t necessarily allow full control over both behaviors.

Key limitation

In most current implementations:

• Global auto-size preference → scriptable (limited support depending on version)
• Regional Text “Auto Resize” → not fully accessible via scripting API, only UI-level or object-level internal property

What you can try

If your goal is to enforce auto-resize on newly created text objects, you may need to:

• Enable the preference manually in UI first
• Then apply settings per text object (if the API exposes textFrame.autoSize or similar in your environment version)
• Use a creation hook (if available) to apply settings immediately after text frame creation

About your code

Your approach is on the right track, but getStringPreference('text/autoSizing') may not reflect the actual toggle used in the UI—it often differs from internal flags.

Suggestion

If this is for production workflow automation, it would be worth confirming:

• The exact application/version you are targeting
• Whether the scripting API supports textFrame auto-size properties in that version

If you want, I can help you rewrite the script to attempt per-text-object auto-resize based on your environment.

You can enable Auto Resize by opening Illustrator and navigating to Preferences > Type. Depending on your Illustrator version, the Auto Size New Area Type option should be available there.

For Regional Text Options, check your language and text settings under Preferences and make sure the appropriate language support is enabled. Some regional text features may only appear in specific versions or language configurations.

If the settings are not visible, updating Illustrator to the latest version and restarting the application often helps.

I recently faced a similar issue while working on app-related graphics and UI assets, and updating the software resolved several missing text options. Hopefully, this helps.

Hi,

I faced a similar issue while working with Illustrator scripting. From what I found, the "Auto Resize" options under Preferences and Regional Text Options are not currently exposed through the standard scripting preference APIs. That's why methods like getBooleanPreference() or getStringPreference() don't return a usable value for these settings.

The workaround shared by m1b is currently one of the most reliable solutions because it triggers the internal Area Text Options action directly. While it feels a bit like a hack, it allows you to enable Auto Size on selected text frames when the preference itself isn't accessible through scripting.

If your goal is to apply Auto Resize automatically across multiple text frames, you could wrap the action-based approach into a batch-processing script and run it on all selected objects.

I spent quite a bit of time researching this as well and found that Illustrator exposes only a limited set of text preferences to scripts, which is why many developers end up using Actions for advanced text automation.

For anyone working with Illustrator automation and text-related scripting, I also found some useful scripting resources and examples here that may help with similar issues:https://ps2biosonlines.com/

Hope this helps someone else who runs into the same limitation.

Thanks for sharing this script. The Illustrator architecture for toggling Auto Resize is indeed overly complicated. The workaround with converting to point text and back works, but it's risky for overflowing text. I wish Adobe would just expose a simple preference toggle for individual text frames instead of requiring these hacks. For those interested in practical tools and niche communities, check out https://picardclub-belge.be/

Hi ​@m1b 

Look at this, I happened to reply to myself before you.

This front-end code can enable the preference "automatically adjust the size of the text box in the new area".

But the following code cannot enable automatic resizing of individual text boxes.
I don't know why it needs to be converted into dotted text.
And it may accidentally delete overflow text.

Strange Illustrator architecture, is it so complicated to turn on a switch?

//app.preferences.setBooleanPreference("text/autoSizing",!app.preferences.getBooleanPreference("text/autoSizing"));
app.preferences.setBooleanPreference("text/autoSizing", true);
function setAutoTextFrames() {
    var autoSize = app.preferences.getBooleanPreference("text/autoSizing");
    app.preferences.setBooleanPreference("text/autoSizing", true);
    var doc = app.activeDocument;
    var items = doc.selection;
    var content;
    for (var i = items.length - 1; i > -1; i--) {
        if (items[i].kind == TextType.AREATEXT) {
            content = items[i].contents;
            items[i].contents = "This is just a random string of text to keep the width of the text frame stable while we convert to point text then back to area text";
            items[i].convertAreaObjectToPointObject();
            items[i].convertPointObjectToAreaObject();
            items[i].contents = content;
        }
    }
    app.preferences.setBooleanPreference("text/autoSizing", autoSize);
}
setAutoTextFrames();