How to un-do outlines fonts?

[skysaddle12]

Help! I'm under deadline to update my wine labels and my designer from last year "created outlines"

so now all of my fonts are un-editable. They just appear as thousands of blue dots when selected.

Is there a way to change them back to regular text?

[Scott Falkner]

No. You will need to retype the text and reformat. Now you know not to do that in the future and to tell all your designers not to.

[skysaddle12]

Thanks Scott....that's what I was afraid of, and what my

Illustrator teacher also told us never to do. I wonder why printers

want the fonts outlined...because they might not own the font?

It seems like Illustraor should have an "undo create outline" feature!

[_scott_]

It's common to have a 2-file workflow... similar to photoshop. One file to edit then save as to create an output file with type outlined. Always return to teh original file for edits then save as again and overwrite the output file.

[JETalmage]

It seems like Illustraor should have an "undo create outline" feature!

I see that comment posted here every once in a while. It doesn't make sense.

When you "convert" live text to paths, you are instructing Illustrator to "act like a PostScript printer" and fetch the actual Bezier paths that are contained in the font file, and put copies of those paths on the page. Once you have done that, the resulting paths are just ordinary paths. They can be manipulated as ordinary paths (which is the real intent of the feature to begin with). They are not any kind of special object that maintains some kind of connection to the font from which they are extracted. There's nothing stored in the file that says "This path was originally obtained from a glyph slot in font XYZ." That wouldn't make sense, because the path could have been cut or otherwise manipulated long since it was obtained. (Again, that's the whole idea. The feature's purpose is not to exempt printing firms from having to obtain fonts.) The path is just as if you had drawn it from scratch with the Pen tool.

So now imaging you just draw a path with the Pen tool. Would it make sense to tell Illustrator to "convert" that path to a live text object of a particular font? Of course not. There is no data correlation between a path and a font.

JET

[Larry G. Schneider]

To save time on retyping try resaving a copy of the file and opening the file in Acrobat. Use the OCR feature there to make new text.

[nickrau9]

Thank God for Larry.... Just saved me so much time!!

[Larry G. Schneider]

You're welcome.

[Harron_K_Appleman]

I've put in a feature request wherein Illustrator would deliver an electrical shock to the user via the keyboard every time type is converted to paths... unless, of course, certain criteria -- proper reason for converting, availability of live text backup, etc. -- are met. The feature request further seeks a method by which a commercial printer would receive an electrical shock for demanding outlined type from designers.

By the way, I've put the request in under Wade's name because I figured that would carry more weight. Just a heads-up, Wade, so you know why FBI agents might be knocking at your door.

[Jesseham-jc1rvC]

Make sure they offer that shock in metric for sending overseas.

[puts on rubber gloves]  We outline all our type here to send off to China where who knows who is going to do who knows what to our files.  Maybe most people are able to be more in contact with their printers but here, we are a few steps removed. [/gloves]

[Harron_K_Appleman]

Ah... the ol' rubber glove workaround. Didn't see that one coming.

[markc98769030]

It might not make sense to tell illustrator to convert a path into a type again, but what if you made it so illustrator recorded the fact that that particular outline use to be a font when you first convert it to an outline, seems to me that it would then be possible.

[sco77sco]

Printers sometimes want fonts turned to outlines so that they don't have any text shifting in any of their workflows.  They may take the file you send them and have to output it on many different types of machines.  If they have to "rip" the file at all they don't want to risk any movement of the font.  Some rips do not handle true type fonts that well either.

[Michael Riordan]

Outlining fonts is a sometimes necessary evil. What I've learned to do is duplicate the type BEFORE i outline it and move that duplicate text to its own layer. When I turn of the layer, Illustrator does not trouble with it, does not say I'm missing fonts, ignores it basically. Then I go ahead and outline the original  type that's on the original layer. If anyone comes along and asks for a change, I can switch my hidden type layer back on and work with text. If it gets shipped anywhere else and they don't have the font, the can at least turn on the layer and check the type specs and the name of the missing font.

Just a good working practice.

[shunithD]

Michael Riordan wrote:

Outlining fonts is a sometimes necessary evil. What I've learned to do is duplicate the type BEFORE i outline it and move that duplicate text to its own layer. <snipped>

That's an interesting way to go Michael...

I tend to use the other option of two files... must try this and see if it fits my ways...

[Marley C.]

Now why have I never thought of that?! This seems WAY easier than having two files!!

[cameronprudames]

What I ldo .. before I outline the text I will copy all of the text into a new layer (does not need to have an artboard) make that layers visibility hidden. That way you only have to have one document which has the outline text and also editable text