Hidden Characters Missing in Some Text Boxes

[ClaraPMB]

I have an Illustrator file that contains some text*. I enabled Show Hidden Characters and noticed that they only appear in certain text boxes, while others don’t display them. When I switch to Outline View, the hidden characters are visible in all text boxes. If I move a text box around, the hidden characters briefly appear, but then disappear again once I stop moving it.

This wasn’t an issue when I previously worked on the file on the 10th.

I’ve attached a screenshot showing both Preview and Outline View. In Preview, the top text displays the hidden characters correctly, but the bottom bulleted list** does not. In Outline View, however, all the text shows hidden characters. Restarting Illustrator and adjusting settings/styles hasn’t fixed the issue. 

* I’m aware that InDesign is more suitable for text-heavy documents, but this setup was requested by the manufacturer.
** The bulleted list was created manually, not using Illustrator’s built-in bullets feature.

[Bill Silbert]

If you copy and paste the text into a new Illustrator document does the problem persist?

[ClaraPMB]

Yes, just tried that and the problem still occurs.

[Anubhav M]

Hello @ClaraPMBowman,

I'm sorry to hear you're still having trouble with this. Is the problem specific to this file, or happens with other/new files as well?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

[ClaraPMB · Accepted solution]

I think the issue may have been caused by the original text supplied by the manufacturer. I’ve now reset everything to the default paragraph styling and reapplied my own styles, and the problem seems to be resolved.

I’m not entirely sure what the root cause was, but since much of the text had been copied from a PDF, that may have introduced formatting issues. In any case, it looks like everything is working fine now.