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Is it possible to convert an existing Artistic Text layer to a Text Frame layer?


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I can't find anything in the Help about this but it seems like a reasonable thing to want to do.
It would be nice to be able to easily convert an artistic text layer to a text frame so I can take advantage of the extra functionality without having to manually create new text frames and copying the text over.
Is there any way of doing this easily?
On example where this would be useful is if you had a page originally created in Designer - which doesn't have text frames - that you brought over to Publisher for further editing.

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2 hours ago, GarryP said:

n example where this would be useful is if you had a page originally created in Designer - which doesn't have text frames - that you brought over to Publisher for further editing

I don't think you can convert it.

In any case, Designer does have Frame Text, even if it doesn't have Text Frames, so perhaps you should start with that in Designer if you wanted something similar to text frames :)

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
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Sorry, slip of the keyboard.
What I should have said was, "the text frames in which don't have as much functionality as those in Publisher".
Maybe a better example is creating a poster where you start the illustration stuff in Designer with some basic artistic text, then move over to Publisher to do the fancy typographic stuff - text wrap, baseline grid, etc. - and then move back to Designer to finish things up.
Either way, being able to convert would be nice but not absolutely necessary.
I was just wondering if anyone knew of a better way.

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If you wanted things like text wrap you'd start with Frame Text in the first place, and then there's no need to convert when you take it over to Publisher to add the extra function.

Frame Text is the same between both applications, but in Publisher you also get the Text Frame controls that add a bit more capability.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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What about when you don't know that you might need a text frame when you start off?
You create some artistic text but then much later on think, "Ah, I wish I'd made this a text frame instead".
This isn't just for moving from one app to another, the same issue can be evident in the same app - I've done it a few times myself and will probably do it again in the future.

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53 minutes ago, GarryP said:

You create some artistic text but then much later on think, "Ah, I wish I'd made this a text frame instead".

Double-click on it, select all, cut, delete the artistic text, create a corresponding text frame, double-click, paste.

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1 hour ago, William Overington said:

Yet it would be good if one could highlight some Artistic Text and then format as "Change to ordinary text in a frame" or something like that.

Oh, I dunno. I don't really know why Serif has brought forward the concept of both types of text into a "modern" software, much less a layout application. With how one can resize frame text it mostly makes the "point" text superfluous.

But as long as they are using the old PP concept in APub, as has CorelDraw, they might want to finish it off like CD and be able to convert between the two types of text.

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23 hours ago, GarryP said:

What about when you don't know that you might need a text frame when you start off?
You create some artistic text but then much later on think, "Ah, I wish I'd made this a text frame instead".
This isn't just for moving from one app to another, the same issue can be evident in the same app - I've done it a few times myself and will probably do it again in the future.

Hi GarryP,
The Artistic Text Tool - as the name implies - is mostly to get creative with text effects/manipulation. It's usually used to create artistic headers, logo manipulation, stamps and other creative tasks where letters/simple words/small sentences are involved. For anything else the Frame Text Tool is the way to go. You usually know which one to choose depending on the type of project/object you are working with. In case you really need "convert" between them in one or other occasion, copy and paste should cover those cases.

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1 hour ago, MikeW said:

But as long as they are using the old PP concept in APub, as has CorelDraw, they might want to finish it off like CD and be able to convert between the two types of text.

What happens in CD when you convert frame text to artistic text? Does it have line breaks inserted to preserve the layout — and if so, don’t you then have a bunch of line breaks to remove if you convert it back to frame text?

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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7 minutes ago, Alfred said:

What happens in CD when you convert frame text to artistic text? Does it have line breaks inserted to preserve the layout — and if so, don’t you then have a bunch of line breaks to remove if you convert it back to frame text?

Line breaks are maintained whether they are soft or hard returns. In general, wouldn't one desire to maintain the layout? However, if one wanted to have flowing text, I had help on a script that one can 1) convert one or more frames to paragraph text in selection order & 2) combine all soft returns to wrap while maintaining the hard returns. The other option would be just to search the frame for soft returns, delete and replace with a space. Or, if there isn't much to do, one can always just manually remove the soft returns.

 

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10 minutes ago, MikeW said:

In general, wouldn't one desire to maintain the layout?

Yes, you would want to maintain the layout when converting from frame text to artistic text, but when converting in the opposite direction you’re quite likely to want the same flowing text that you get when creating frame text from scratch (hence my question).

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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12 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Yes, you would want to maintain the layout when converting from frame text to artistic text, but when converting in the opposite direction you’re quite likely to want the same flowing text that you get when creating frame text from scratch (hence my question).

Which is one reason why I seeked help on the CD macro. I was converting a bunch of PDFs where the original files didn't exist and the macro aided me a lot for reconstruction then and since. But it isn't onerous to do a find/replace post conversion, either.

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In Affinity, you can not convert artistic text to text in a frame.
You can do it without any problems in CorelDraw. Also the text in the frame can be converted to artistic text. It is very useful and I often use this function in my everyday work while designing business cards, leaflets, etc.
I hope that this function will be added soon in Affinity.

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