Resizing a text box in illustrator CS4

Yabsley · 20 May 2010 at 17:13

Hi

I'm having real problems trying to resize a text box in illustrator. For example say I want to increase the height of the text box. I'll select the resize tool, drag the bottom anchor point in the centre of the text box which increase the size but the problem I'm having with it is that it stretches the text.

It makes no difference on how I create the text box, either click and type or drag a box with the type tool selected.

Any help with this would be really appreciated, it's very frustrating.

Thanks

gord · 20 May 2010 at 17:20

Hmm, in Illustrator using the text tool a single click should give you a text line tool. The drag and drop will give you a text box when you resize just affects the area, not the font. Have you tried using the direct select tool to grab one of the corner points and move it, see if it still stretches. If it does then you have selected some option that resizes the text no matter what, my CS3 definitely doesn't do it.

Yabsley · 20 May 2010 at 17:56

The direct selection tool allows me to drag each corner point individually. However with the direct selection tool there is no anchor point in the centre of the bounding lines thus I'm not able to easily move say the bottom line down.

Yabsley · 22 May 2010 at 18:17

I've just figured out how it works. I knew this would happen and that I'd stumble across the answer unintentionally at some point.

If you have the Selection Tool (V) selected and then you click onto the Free Transform Tool (E) and try to resize a text box it will squish the text up as if you were resizing an image.

If you have the Direct Selection Tool (A) selected and then you click onto the Free Transform Tool (E) this will allow you to move the sides in or out to make the text box larger or smaller without stretching the text in anyway.

So the behaviour is different depending on which selection tool you have enabled prior to using the Free Transform Tool. A similar thing is true when using the pen tool I've noticed.

Anyway this may or may not be helpful to others but thought I'd post just in case.