Illustrator reinterprets lines and breaks them into small pieces

[neilas82770249]

I have line art that may have been created in an older version of Illustrator or perhaps in PPT. When I open it in the latest version of Illustrator, the lines are broken into numerous small sections. Curves that were made with three anchors now have 30. Text that was in a singular text box is now broken into several text boxes with some breaks coming in the middle of words. How can I stop this from happening? Or what is the easiest way to fix it? Thank you!

[Barbara Ash]

If the art was created in PowerPoint, first open it in PowerPoint and save it as .EMF (enhanced metafile). Then open the EMF in Illustrator. 

[neilas82770249]

Thank you Barbara! I am excited to try this.

What if I no longer have the PPT and the elements are already in Illustrator and are broken? I'm not sure if they were segmented from the move from old Illustrator to new illustrator or from the move from PPT to AI 2020.

Thank you so much for your response. I really appreciate it.

Neila

[Barbara Ash]

The best thing to do is to re-create the artwork in Illustrator.

If I knew what your illustration looks like I might have another suggestion.

[neilas82770249]

[Barbara Ash]

It's difficult to tell exactly what's going on without seeing the anchor points.

It's easy to add arrowheads in Illustrator in the Stroke panel and would probably take less time than trying to fix the broken arrowheads. You can adjust the size of the arrowhead in proportion to the line weight.

If you prefer to fix the arrowheads, with the Direct Selection tool, select two anchor points that need to be joined.

Then choose Object > Path > Join. Continue to do that until all the pieces are joined together.

[neilas82770249]

Hi Barbara:

It sounds like the solution is to stop it from breaking in the first place using .EMF. And if it does break, then just redraw.  Thank you.

I have one last question. The text boxes break also. Should I retype the content or is there an easy way to rejoin broken text boxes?

Thank you again.

[Barbara Ash · Accepted solution]

This will put all of the text together as one piece --

Select all of the text with the black Selection tool.

Edit > Copy. (Copy so that you still have the original text for proofreading later.)

With the Type tool, drag on the artboard. You will see a rectangle.

Then Edit > Paste.

Once you do that, you'll need to proofread the text because it often gets scrampled in the process.

[neilas82770249]

Thank you! That is an easy solution. I really appreciate your advice. We have been dealing with this problem for a long time. Neila