Avoid Problems when Outlining in Illustrator: A Great Tip!

So you’ve created an awesome design for your client in Adobe Illustrator, only now they want to change the last line of copy….Oops…you already converted the text to outlines so it would be press-ready.

Well, fret no more! I just found a great article on what to do when this happens, since there is no way to undo outlines in Illustrator…which means you’d have to reacreate your entire design from scratch!!! (*yikes!!!*) And yes this has happened to me several times, so I speak from experience. Hopefully, with this pointer, we’ll all be safe from this frustrating part of illustrator!!

Via The End of Magic blog post

Avoid problems after outlining text… before!

The most important fact about text outlining is that it can’t be undone, that is, there’s no “undo text outlines” command. Sure there are workarounds in case you have to do undo it, but they are only available for limited time – once you close the file, the workarounds are lost.

If the file is for your use only, maybe you won’t even need to worry about this – you might as well not create the outlines -, but if it is for someone else you must always have a way of modifying text in the future, as people – and specially paying clients – constantly change their minds.

Typos appear, better phrases and slogans are created, new visual representation is necessary, and so on… Are you really going to redo all the work? Definitely not!

So here are a few tips on how to avoid doing free work (because no one is going to pay you for your mistake) or just a bad headache:

Before creating the outlines:

1. Make a copy of the layer that has the text and hide this layer; or
2. make a copy of the text and paste it somewhere on Illustrator’s huge pasteboard, that is, the area outside the artboard’s borders. Simply Alt + click + drag the text and you’ll get a copy; or
3. make a copy of the file.

In case there’s a lot of text to select, avoid extra clicks by going to Select » Object » Text Objects.

After creating the outlines (in case you forgot to do any of the steps above):

1. Do not close the file.
2. If you’ve done more work since converting the text, save the file, undo everything until you reach the unconverted text, copy the text, close the file without saving it, open the file again and paste the text (Ctrl + F to paste in place).

Annoyances · Jun 22, 2007