How do I force text without spaces to show in text field?

[Besnardm]

I have a long list of words that are all mashed together. I'm trying to create a word wall that doesn't contain spaces. I want to paste a long list of letters and have it break the lines up automatically for me by force ending words where needed (it's not a monospaced font and I don't want a grid like look to it), but it's not handling it for me even if I tell it to hyphenate so I can tell where to linebreak manually. When I paste the list into the text box it vanishes.

Is there a way to force it to show without having to manually add line breaks before pasting? Or a way to just have it show and break where it needs to? For further clarity I'm creating something very similar to this idea (first picture) but with words not letters.

[Kurt Gold]

Can you show your initial text and the arrangement you are looking for?

A sketch that shows a "before" and "after" state.

[Besnardm]

I want to take a lot of words like this:

candy sugar donut orange biscuit tiramisu lollipop pastry cake cookie jelly jelly tiramisu cream vanilla jelly cookie pastry sweet dolor. Biscuit marzipan vanilla marzipan muffin croissant marzipan jelly ipsum croissant dolor biscuit candy candy candy jelly sweet pastry muffin dolor. Croissant biscuit cake tiramisu cookie cake cream biscuit candy croissant cake vanilla ipsum cookie donut ipsum tiramisu sugar cream dolor. Croissant croissant dolor candy cake vanilla donut sprinkles cookie dolor sugar sprinkles orange vanilla vanilla orange orange tiramisu orange candy

And I want to paste it into the box like this:
candysugardonutorangebiscuittiramisulollipoppastrycakecookiejellyjellytiramisucreamvanillajellycookiepastrysweetdolor.Biscuitmarzipanvanillamarzipanmuffincroissantmarzipanjellyipsumcroissantdolorbiscuitcandycandycandyjellysweetpastrymuffindolor.Croissantbiscuitcaketiramisucookiecakecreambiscuitcandycroissantcakevanillaipsumcookiedonutipsumtiramisusugarcreamdolor.Croissantcroissantdolorcandycakevanilladonutsprinklescookiedolorsugarsprinklesorangevanillavanillaorangeorangetiramisuorangecandy

When I do that the text box vanishes. I want it to look like this...

candysugardonutorangebiscuittiramisulollipoppastrycakecookiejelly

jellytiramisucreamvanillajellycookiepastrysweetdolor.Biscuitmarzip

anvanillamarzipanmuffincroissantmarzipanjellyipsumcroissantdolor

biscuitcandycandycandyjellysweetpastrymuffindolor.Croissantbiscu

itcaketiramisucookiecakecreambiscuitcandycroissantcakevanillaips

umcookiedonutipsumtiramisusugarcreamdolor.Croissantcroissantdo

lorcandycakevanilladonutsprinklescookiedolorsugarsprinklesorange

vanillavanillaorangeorangetiramisuorangecandy.

Or if I made the text field smaller it would do this:

candysugardonutorangebiscuittir

amisulollipoppastrycakecookieje

llyjellytiramisucreamvanillajelly

cookiepastrysweetdolor.Biscuitm

arzipanvanillamarzipanmuffincr

oissantmarzipanjellyipsumcrois

santdolorbiscuitcandycandycan

dyjellysweetpastrymuffindolor.C

roissantbiscuitcaketiramisucook

iecakecreambiscuitcandycroissa

ntcakevanillaipsumcookiedonut

ipsumtiramisusugarcreamdolor.

Croissantcroissantdolorcandyc

akevanilladonutsprinklescooki

edolorsugarsprinklesorangeva

nillavanillaorangeorangetiram

isuorangecandy.

Does that help? 😄

[Monika Gause]

Maybe try and apply the language setting Arabic to it in the Character panel?

[kphotopage]

Besnard, Hi.

If I understand you correctly, you want text with no spaces, no paragraph returns, force line breaks where you want them. Then copy and paste into perhaps a new document or  different size text box.

Yes/No???

I’ll try to cover all the basics in hopes you can resolve whatever issues you are having.

Here I’m using the nursery rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb as text.

Type>Show Hidden Characters

Type>Area Text (Not point Text)

Paragraph, uncheck Hyphenate

To Rid all spaces and all Paragraph Returns, I used Edit>Find and Replace.

To break your characters where you want them, use Type>Insert Break Character.

Select All, Copy and Paste into a new Area Text Box.

Resize bounding box as desired.

K

[Ton Frederiks]

I remember that there is a limit to the amount of characters in a single word (cannot find the exact amount).

You may need to split up the text.

[Ton Frederiks]

I think the limit is 6187 characters in a word. 6188 makes it disappear.

[kphotopage]

Ton, that is interesting. I did not know Illustrator had a limit on Character count in a single word.

All the same, 6,187 is a ginormous size!!!

So using Word, I decided to check Mary had a little Lamb and also OP text.

Here are the results.

Both are way under the speed limit.

K

[Ton Frederiks]

Have a look at this file and compare it to what you have.

Add one more character and the text disappears.

https://shared-assets.adobe.com/link/c329a6ce-6bee-44f9-7b44-eee7c357ce80

[Kurt Gold]

If the limit is indeed the main issue in this case, you may just insert a space at the end of about 6000 characters and set its horizontal scaling to 1 %. Or use appropriate kerning to make the space invisible.

[Ton Frederiks]

And the limit is fluid.

I could add one or more periods and go beyond 6187.

Removing the periods and adding other characters it stops at 6164.

So the character width seems to have a role.

[kphotopage]

Now this is really peaking my interest here.

Here I am using OP text.

I copied and pasted into an Area Text Box.

Duplicated, used Find/Replace to rid the spaces.

Copied and pasted into a new text box.

Resized.

I simply can not duplicate any problems OP is having.

All working as expected.

I’m using:

MacOS Catalina, version 10.15.6

Illustrator 2020, version 24.3.0

K

[Kurt Gold]

kphotopage, good evening.

You may be able to reproduce the (possible) issue in this case.

As indicated by Ton, we have a massive global issue that disallows to type single words in Illustrator that consist of more than about 6000 characters. Something that is absolutely common in almost all languages worldwide.

So, you may just create a type object in Illustrator and type a beautiful word like this one (click on the link):

Llanfair

Then copy that word and paste it about 107 or 120 times, right at the end of the first word without any space character. The beautiful composition will disappear because Illustrator does not support words with more than about 6000 characters, although almost all application users would like to to that constantly.

Astounding behaviour.

[Ton Frederiks]

Or try Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung

[Kurt Gold]

Ah, that's a pretty short compound word in German, Ton.

There are certainly way more extreme words and probably German is the only language that may exceed the limit in Illustrator.

[pixxxelschubser]

Until 2013, the longest valid German word:

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

[Kurt Gold]

Oh, Pixxxelschubser, I thought it is rather:

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetzesvorlagenverordnungsverhinderungsantragsbetrugsverdacht.

But I could be wrong, of course.

[pixxxelschubser]

😄

Also not bad. However, "my" variant was actually valid and was in the Duden (until this law was repealed in 2013 and the word was deleted from the dictionaries)

[pixxxelschubser]

From: https://de.babbel.com/de/magazine/das-laengste-wort

Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylalanyl...isoleucine

The longest word in the world has a total of 189,819 letters and is the systematic name of the chemical compound of the largest known protein, titin.

Illustrator definitely can't do that anymore.