Hi list,
In Freehand you have the option to make text boxes auto-expandable, both
vertically and horizontally.
In Illustrator 'point-type' expands by default, while 'area-type' needs to be
expanded manually.
All my FH text came into Illustrator as 'area type'.
Is it possible to make thes text boxes to expand automatically in Illustrator?
Thanks,
Willem van den Goorbergh

Willem, there's no way within Illustrator to switch a text block from 'point
type' to 'area type'. It's a serious limitation, in my opinion.

Illustrator users cut text and paste it into a new text block of the other
type. This would be a daunting task where many text blocks are involved,
such as on a map.

I suggest you do the conversion in FH. Select all non-expanding blocks that
you want to expand and use the controls in the text block panel of
FreeHand's object inspector.

Judy Arndt

Thank Judy,
Annoying!
A quick test revealed the following:
Opening a FH 11.02 file directly in Ill CS3:
All FH text blocks are box type in Ill (whether they were auto expandable in
FH or not)
Copy-paste text boxes from FH to Ill:
auto expandable text boxes become point type in Ill (auto expandable)
Non-expanding text blocks expand fully in height but only partially in width.
So, for the moment, copy-paste is preferred over opening directly.
Cumbersome!! (I share your opinion, as always )
Willem

> Copy-paste text boxes from FH to Ill:
> auto expandable text boxes become point type in Ill (auto expandable)
> Non-expanding text blocks expand fully in height but only partially in width.

Willem, I'm getting different results than you. How do you have your FH
export preferences set? (They control what is copied to the clipboard.)

If you export to an EPS file and open with AICS3, then all text becomes
point type. This is undesirable for paragraphs, but might be a way to
migrate a layer of map labels.

Judy Arndt

Hi Judy,
Export settings are:
Output options: - always ASCII image data
Clipboard formats: pict off, all 4 others on, colors: CMYK & RGB

I opened a random FH eps in CS3. At first sight all text boxes are point type
indeed but a number of them are split up in multiple boxes. That's even worse.
I'll have to look into this further. (got hundreds of files to convert the
coming years ( )
Thanks for bearing with me.
Willem van den Goorbergh