How to divide all textFrames in one-character-per-textFrame?

[victorcarbajo]

Hello:

How to divide all textFrames in one-character-per-textFrame?

Example: the textFrame "Letters" will be divided in 7 textFrames: "L", "e", "t", "t", "e", "r", "s".

Help, please.

[kwhite314]

Hi Carlos, I've been reading a lot of your responses across several related topics and I think you may be able to help me.

I edit a lot of pdfs from CAD programs and Excel files in Illustrator CS6. Often the pdfs text imports each letter as an individual frame. I found a script called "JoinTextFrames" which allows me to relink the individual letters together when the are selected mannualy as a word or number value.

The script works alright but especially in the excel files it gets tedious to select each group of numbers or string of letters. Also, its not consistant with puctuation like commas, periods or other glyphs.

Would you know a better way script Illustrator to search say at an artboard level; and go across a document identifying each word/number group, based on the coordinates that are touching, to make whole words and numbers?

Long time Adobe user but noob at scripting, Sorry for the long reply. Thanks!

[CarlosCanto]

interesting, not sure if it can be easily accomplished...can you share a file?

[kwhite314]

Carlos, I've sent you a private message with links to sample files. Thanks for offering to take a look!

[kwhite314]

Many Thanks to CarlosCanta who provided me an excellent script for merging text intelligently!

[AdGod]

Hi, I am trying to use the script that creates textframe for each word but I am getting this error. Would you know how to fix this please?

Textframe to words script error please help

[CarlosCanto]

Hello, I posted an updated script, it's on page 3 on this thread

[Sarah-cs]

this was very very helpful guys thank you all ..

i just wanted some help when applying the same division functionality on a diagonal text frame , i.e a rotated text frame that's neither perfectly vertical nor horizontal

the image i attached shows a diagonal case of those i'm dealig with

thnx in advance

[CarlosCanto]

Hi Sarah, not as easy as I though...stay tuned

[hussein87]

hi,

i want to use this script inside Indesgin CS3 ME,CS5.5 ME. it's very important to me

Thank you

[CarlosCanto]

sorry but this is for Illustrator only script, try asking in the ID scripting forum if someone could rewrite it to make it work in ID.

[brunos64207608]

Thanks man!!!! Very hepful,

[neilb69570407]

Hi Carlos,

When I use either your 'characters' or 'words' script, I get the following error message.  I'm using CC2019.

Any ideas why that's happening?

[ahablett]

I receive the same error, and would also love this function to pieces.
Adobe CC 2019 on Mac

[Arnaud Peron]

sorry to be such a noobie, but what am I supposed to do with this buch of text ? I tried to copy it text edit, then save it, then rename the extension to .js and place it in the script folder of my illustrator but I have always error to load. Am I doing things correctly ?

[Qwertyfly___]

I would recommend saving as .jsx not .js

Note: if you are on pc and you don't have extensions of known file types showing, then it may not be changing the extension properly.

using the ESTK is recommended.

also there is more then 1 script folders.

the path should be like this...

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CC 2014\Presets\en_GB\Scripts

once saved in there you will need to restart illustrator

[CarlosCanto]

not being familiar with mac, I guess you have to save as Plain Text, Text Edit's default is Rich Text, right?

[Qwertyfly___]

Guess its worth recommending the use of ESTK.

it is happy to save JSX in the correct format.

well it should be...

Thats why it exists.

[CarlosCanto]

true, but for some strange reason, non-scripters have a really hard time finding and/or using it...every time I have suggested it over the years.

[Qwertyfly___]

for those running Win7 ( and prob win 8 or 10 😞

Press the Win key,

then type extendscript.

first option should be your extendscript toolkit

[W_J_T]

It's the same via OSX using spotlight search: "extendscript" (you will then see the Extendscript Toolkit)

[W_J_T]

CarlosCanto wrote:

not being familiar with mac, I guess you have to save as Plain Text, Text Edit's default is Rich Text, right?

OSX TextEdit app defaults to rich text, it can be changed per document to "plain text" via:

Format (menu) > Make Plain Text

Or can be made the default for new documents via:

Preferences (menu) > Format > Plain Text

[sloka0210]

Hi Carlos,

This is brilliant. I too have a small request. Can you please give me a script where I can split a paragraph into individual lines. For example, if there is a paragraph with 10 lines, the final output after executing the code should be 10 different lines. It will save tons of my time. Thanking you in anticipation....

[CarlosCanto]

sure, use DivideTextFrame script by Wundes, look here

wundes.com

[sloka0210]

Thanks Man.

[Geracsso]

Hi Carlos,

I tried your script splitSelectedWordsIntoCharacters.jsx, saved it as a JSX files, opened it through the Adobe Illustrator 2020 File > Scripts > Other scripts... Menu but I got the below error. Same happend when I tried the JS script. Could you tell me what I'm doing wrong? It seems to be working for everyone else. I'm on a Windows 10 OS.