How do I Italicize specific text in Illustrator CS6?

[Winklepleck]

I am having problems italicizing specific groups of text. I am working on artwork for a CD project. I have lines of text which include the song authors, which I would like to italicize, , but I would like the other text to remain 'regular'. Older versions of Illustrator would do this, but I'm having trouble. Is this no longer a feature of the application? How do I do this?

[Theresa J]

I'm not sure why it isn't working for you, but perhaps you are selecting the entire block of text with the selection tool. If you highlight just the words that you want to italize with the Type tool, it should work for you.

[Willi Adelberger]

You have to use a font which includes an Italic Typeface and then you have to select the text and change the font style, better would be to create a character style with Font and Typeface information and apply it to the selected text.

Much better would be, to use for those tasks InDesign and not Illustrator.

[Jacob Bugge]

winkleplck,

So it fails to work whan you click the live Type with the Type Tool, then press Shift and the relevant arrow to highlight, then in the Character palette under the font you click the Italic in the dropdown (which is available if the font includes the option)?

If it applies to any document, I believe yje list may be relevant.

Sometimes, (certain) things may fail or stop working for no apparent reason. When the (other) possible reasons/cures fail to work, it may be some kind of (temporay or permanent) corruption, or even some inconvenient preference setting(s), which may be cured with something on the following list set up in an attempt to provide a catchall solution for otherwise unsolvable cases. It starts with a few easy and harmless suggestions 1) and 2) for milder cases, and goes on with two alternative ways 3) and 4) of resetting preferences to the defaults (easily but irreversibly and more laboriously but more thoroughly and also reversibly), then follows a list 5) of various other possibilities, and it ends with a full reinstallation 6). If no other suggestions work, or if no other suggestions appear, you may start on the list and decide how far to go and/or which may be relevant.

The following is a general list of things you may try when

A) The issue is not in a specific file,

B) You have a printer correctly installed, connected, and turned on if it is physical printer (you may use Adobe PDF/Acrobat Distiller as the default printer with no need to have a printer turned on, obviously you will need to specify when you actually need to print on paper), and

C) It is not caused by issues with opening a file from external media (see at the bottom).

You may have tried/done some of them already; 1) and 2) are the easy ones for temporary strangenesses, and 3) and 4) are specifically aimed at possibly corrupt/inconvenient preferences); 5) is a list in itself, and 6) is the last resort.

If possible/applicable, you should save current artwork first, of course.

1) Close down Illy and open again;

2) Restart the computer (you may do that up to at least 5 times);

3) Close down Illy and press Ctrl+Alt+Shift/Cmd+Option+Shift during startup (easy but irreversible);

4) Move the folder (follow the link with that name) with Illy closed (more tedious but also more thorough and reversible), for CS3 - CC you may find the folder here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/preference-file-location-illustrator.html

5) Look through and try out the relevant among the Other options (follow the link with that name, Item 7) is a list of usual suspects among other applications that may disturb and confuse Illy, Item 15) applies to CC, CS6, and maybe CS5);

Even more seriously, you may:

6) A) Uninstall (ticking the box to delete the preferences if applicable), B) run the Cleaner Tool (if you have CS3/CS4/CS5/CS6/CC), and C) reinstall. It is important to use this full three step way: otherwise, things may linger.

http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cscleanertool.html

[Jacob Bugge]

winklepleck,

If it only happens to one document (or some specific ones), you have file corruption.

If possible, you may try to copy and paste the artwork, possibly in groups/bits/whatever to a new document if applicable.

Another thing often tried first is to create a new document and File>Place the (PDF contents, if any, of the) corrupted one to see how much may be rescued that way.

Here are some websites where you can see whether it can rescue the actual file, and if it can, you may pay for a subscription to have it done,

http://www.recoverytoolbox.com/buy_illustrator.html

http://markzware.com/adobe-software/fix-illustrator-file-unknown-error-occurred-pdf2dtp-file-recover...

http://www.illustrator.fixtoolbox.com/

As far as I remember, the first one is for Win and the second one is for Mac, while the third one should be for both.

Here are a few pages about struggling with it yourself:

http://daxxter.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/how-to-recover-a-corrupted-illustrator-ai-file/

http://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/troubleshoot-damaged-illustrator-files.html

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/500/cpsid_50032.html

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/500/cpsid_50031.html

http://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/enable-content-recovery-mode-illustrator.html

[Winklepleck]

The problem is a little different than that, so I'll explain it more

clearly.

I'm doing CD artwork for a business that uses Adobe Illustrator templates

that have been converted into PDF files. When you open this file in

Illustrator there are three layers, one for the artwork, and two for the

registration marks and the instructions which are off to one side. I just

couldn't select the text at all on the artwork layer, or any layer for that

matter. You could type a word and fix spelling errors by using the cursor

and deleting one character at a time, but you couldn't select a group of

words or the paragraph by swiping across it.

HOWEVER... when I opened a separate document and created the text there, I

could do all the normal things including italicizing specific text. BUT...

when I selected the formatted text and tried to copy and paste in into the

other document, it would all revert to 'regular' text and the box which

identifies the font was blank (helvetica, in this case).

This is really about the template I believe. I'd like to know more about

this if I could. I have AI CS6 on a MacBook Pro.

On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 2:44 AM, Jacob Bugge <forums_noreply@adobe.com>

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

winklepleck schrieb:

I'm doing CD artwork for a business that uses Adobe Illustrator templates

that have been converted into PDF files. When you open this file in

Illustrator there are three layers, one for the artwork, and two for the

registration marks and the instructions which are off to one side. I just

couldn't select the text at all on the artwork layer, or any layer for that

matter.

That's just what happens in a PDF. When text tracking or kerning is changed from the font defaults then it gets cut into pieces.

And once again: Illustrator is not a general purpose PDF editor.

http://prepression.blogspot.de/2014/09/the-ten-commandments-of-pdf.html

As for AI and Illustrator PDF files, please watch this video:

Mysterious things Illustrator does - Saving files on Vimeo

In order to solve your problem: you need to glue the text together again.

Either by copying all text objects (together) into the clipboard, then create an area text and paste.

Or with scripts.

[Jacob Bugge]

wiklepleck,

You may say that the PDF versions are simplified versions of the original artwork.

Is it possible to draw on the original AI templates instead?