Help with overlapping letters

[margovin]

Hi! I would really appreciate some help on this, I'm trying to add a stroke to a word in Illustrator. I've converted said word to an object and then added the stroke I needed and aligned said stroke to the outside, but once I do the letters overlap and I'm not sure how to fix this. I wrote to my professor and he said that in order for the letters not to overlap I'd need to convert them into a single object with pathfinder. I've played around with pathfinder but still get the same result and I need a more detailed explanation on how to fix this. I've included a picture to give a better idea of what I'm referring to. Thanks in advance!

[tromboniator · Accepted solution]

You don't need Pathfinder.

Remove the stroke you have. If the letters are not already grouped, group them. With the group selected, open the Appearance panel (Window > Appearance). Click in the horizontal space that says Group to highlight it. In the flyout menu (three lines in the upper right) click on Add New Stroke, which will appear in the panel below Group. Drag it below the line that says Contents. Click on the square to the right of Stroke: select a color, and adjust the stroke weight as you will in the field to the right of that.

Peter

[Omar.Fathy · Accepted solution]

After converting text to shapes ( Creating outlines ), Go to Object> Compound Path> Make.
After that, Stroke will not overlap letters fills.

[margovin]

Just wanted to thank the both of you for taking the time to reply and for your help! I tried both solutions and they both worked for me and will surely help me in the future. This aspiring designer is really grateful 🙂

[tromboniator]

You're welcome. I'm very happy that you found useful information here.

Peter