Working with Text > Breaking text apart |  |

Breaking text apart

You can break apart text to place each character in a separate text block. Once you break text apart, you can quickly distribute the text blocks to separate layers to easily animate each block separately. For information on distributing objects to layers, see Distributing objects to layers for tweened animation. For general information on animation, see Creating Animation.

Note: You cannot break apart text in scrollable text fields.

Text broken apart into separate text blocks

You can also convert text to its component lines and fills to reshape, erase, and otherwise manipulate it. As with any other shape, you can individually group these converted characters, or change them to symbols and animate them. Once you've converted text to lines and fills, you can no longer edit them as text.

Text broken apart into shapes, with modifications applied

To break apart text:

1 | Select the Arrow tool and click a text block.
2 | Choose Modify > Break Apart. Each character in the selected text is placed into a separate text block. The text remains in the same position on the Stage.
3 | Choose Modify > Break Apart again to convert the characters to shapes on the Stage.

Note: The Break Apart command applies only to outline fonts such as TrueType fonts. Bitmap fonts disappear from the screen when you break them apart. PostScript fonts can be broken apart only on Macintosh systems.