Using Type > Working with text blocks > Moving, deleting, and resizing text blocks

 

Moving, deleting, and resizing text blocks

You can move text blocks, and delete selected text blocks or all empty text blocks in a page or document. By dragging their selection handles, you can resize fixed-size text blocks. When working in Preview mode, you can turn selection highlights for text blocks on or off.

To move or delete a text block:

1

Select the Pointer tool and click the text block.

2

Do one of the following:

To move the text block, drag it.

To delete a text block, press Delete or choose Edit > Clear. To delete an empty auto-expanding text block, deselect the block.

To delete all the empty text blocks in a page or document, do one of the following:

Choose Xtras > Delete > Empty Text Blocks. All empty text blocks in the document are removed.

Choose Edit > Find & Replace > Graphics. Click the Find & Replace tab. Choose Remove from the Attribute pop-up menu, and choose Invisible Objects from the Remove pop-up menu. From the Change In menu, choose Page to remove empty text blocks from the current page, or Document to remove all empty text blocks from the document. Click Change. A text message at the bottom left corner of the Find & Replace Graphics dialog box indicates the number of text blocks that were removed.

To resize a fixed-size text block:

1

Select the Pointer tool.

2

Do one of the following:

To adjust the size of a text block, drag a corner handle. Text within the container reflows to fill the new size.

To scale a text block proportionally, Shift-drag a corner handle. Text within the container reflows to fill the new size.

To scale a text block and its font size, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Macintosh) and drag a corner handle.

To scale a text block and its font size proportionally, hold down Shift+Alt (Windows) or Shift+Option (Macintosh) and drag a corner handle.

To reduce the size of a text block to fit the text, double-click the link box at the lower right corner of the text block with the Pointer tool.

To turn off text block selection highlights in Preview mode:

1

Choose Edit > Preferences. Click General.

2

Deselect Smoother Editing. (The Highlight Selected Paths option is also deselected when you perform this step.) Keep in mind that deselecting this option turns off selection highlights for all objects in a document, not just text blocks.

Note: When Preview mode is turned off, text blocks are indicated by black outlines whether they are selected or deselected. For more information on Preview mode, see Optimizing document redraw.