- [Instructor] In this movie I'll show you how to import
text that you created in advance using a word processor.
Now it's not absolutely necessary that you create your text
in advance, you can create type directly inside Illustrator
as easily as selecting the type tool, which you can get by
pressing the "t" key and then you can go ahead and click
inside your document, at which point
Illustrator automatically adds some placeholder text
which is designed to help you preview how your text
is going to look.
The fact that it's white on black shows you that the text
is selected so that you can replace that text
anytime you like, but first I'm going to go ahead
and increase the type size by going up here
to the control panel and selecting, let's say 24-point
from this pop up menu and then I can just enter whatever
text I like from the keyboard and that works great
when you're creating a line of type here or there
as we'll see in future movies but in our case we've got
this three-page document and so we're better off preparing
our text in advance in Microsoft Word or what-have-you
because that way at the very least you can spell-check
your manuscript before bringing it into Illustrator.
And I say that because between you and me,
spell checking is not one of Illustrator's strengths.
Word and the other apps do a much better job.
So, I'm going to go ahead and press the Escape key to exit
the text entry mode and return control
to the Black Arrow tool up here at the top of the toolbox
and then I'll press the backspace key or the delete key
on the Mac to get rid of that text.
To place text created in another program,
you go up to the File menu and you choose the Place command,
which has a keyboard shortcut of ctrl + shift + p
here on the PC or cmd + shift + p on the Mac.
Now, if you're working along with me,
go ahead and make your way to the 08_text subfolder here,
in which among all these Illustrator files
you will find this RTF document near the bottom of the list.
RTF stands for Rich Text Format, which allows you
to save formatting along with your text,
but it could just as easily be a doc or docx file
which are Word's native formats
or it could be a text-only document.
In any case, once you've selected a word processing document
go ahead and click the Place button,
after which you may see this Microsoft Word
options dialog box.
It doesn't really apply to my text, however,
notice that we can choose whether or not to include
table of contents, footnotes or an index,
so if your document contains such things, then great,
you also have the option of getting rid
of any and all text formatting.
In my case, I'm not going to change any of these settings,
I'm just going to click OK.
At which, as you'll see, I load my cursor with text
and now I can do one of two things.
I could just click inside the document in order to create
a new text object, or if I wanted to find the size
of that object I can drag with my cursor like so
and then Illustrator places the text inside the rectangle
defined by my drag.
Now, obviously, this text object doesn't fit
any of the guides that I set up in the previous movie,
but that's okay given that I can resize that text frame
to any extent I like and you do that by first pressing
the Escape key, which will exit the text entry mode
and return control to the Black Arrow tool
and then go to the View menu and choose Show Bounding Box
in order to turn the bounding box on and you also have this
keyboard shortcut of ctrl + shift + b for box.
That's cmd + shift + b on the Mac.
At which point you can now see these handles
surrounding the text frame, which means we can now go ahead
and resize this frame so that it fits inside of this area
right here.
And notice that I'm filling the margins all the way up
to the second horizontal guide.
Alright, now notice if you will this red thing down here
in the bottom right corner of the textframe.
It's hard to make out but it's supposed to be
a little red square with a plus sign inside of it,
which indicates that we have what's known as overflow text.
In other words, there's more text than we're seeing
inside this first frame.
To flow that text on to the next artboard,
go ahead and click on that little plus sign right there
and that will automatically switch you back to the type tool
as you can see here inside the toolbox
and load your cursor with text once again.
At which point, do you want to press shift + PgDn
in order to advance to the next artboard.
And now you can just click with this cursor in the top left
corner of the margin guide in order to create a new text
frame that almost fills the space but not quite.
If I don't like that I can just press ctrl + z
or cmd + z key on the Mac, to undo the placement of that
text and reload my cursor as you're seeing right here
and then I can drag to draw a big rectangle
across the entire margin guide.
Either way, you can see that we still have more overflow
text as witnessed by the appearance of this plus sign
inside the red box, but there's another way to work.
I'm going to press ctrl or cmd + z once again
to undo that text placement and reload my cursor.
Your other option is to press the alt key or the option key
on the Mac in which case you'll see a little loopy Arrow
next to your cursor.
Don't drag with this cursor, just go ahead and click with it
and then release the alt or option key, and notice this time
you not only place some additional overflow text
but you automatically reload your cursor
with still more overflow text, at which point
you'll want to press shift + PgDn in order to advance
to the third artboard and this time I'm going to go ahead
and drag across the entire margin guide
in order to fill the page like so.
Alright that leaves a sloppy textframe
in the second artboard, so I'll press shift + PgUp
to go back to the second artboard and I'll click
on this textframe to select it and now I'll go ahead
and drag this bottom handle downward
so that it snaps into alignment with the bottom
of the margin guide.
Alright, now I'm going to zoom out to take in all of the
artboards by up to the View menu and choosing
Fit All in Windows or you have the keyboard shortcut
of ctrl + alt + 0 or cmd + option + 0 on the Mac.
And you can see if I select his bottom frame down here
that we no longer have any overflow text,
so that's a good thing and we're also seeing
how these frames are threaded and so that's what's meant
by these big thick purple lines here.
So, in other words, the text block on the first artboard
is threaded to the text block on the second artboard
which is then threaded to this final text block.
And that's how you place text that you prepare in advance
in a word processor and then flow onto multiple artboards
here inside Illustrator.