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Manage East Asian text layouts with Reflow Viewer

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    15. Share crash report with Adobe
    16. Improve Illustrator performance

Update or retain East Asian text created in older versions of Illustrator and use them in your existing documents with Reflow Viewer.

Reflow Viewer simplifies viewing, analyzing, and updating layouts with East Asian characters in your older Illustrator document. When you want to edit a document created in an older version of Illustrator, Reflow Viewer allows you to visualize and compare text layouts across versions and automatically flags layout changes based on the text layout information in the document. 

Before you begin

 

To use Reflow Viewer, ensure that:

  • Documents that you want to use in your existing workflow but were created in older versions of Illustrator, contain text layout information.
  • All required fonts are installed on your system.

Work with text layouts created in older Illustrator versions

Working with East Asian text layouts in previous versions of Illustrator was challenging and required detailed adjustments. With Reflow Viewer, you can compare layouts between old and new versions, streamlining your workflow and minimizing the effort needed to edit older documents.

  1. Open the document created in an older version of Illustrator.

  2. Choose one of the following options from the warning dialog that appears:

    Illustrator version used

    Warning dialog detail

    Required action

    10.0 or earlier

    This file contains text that was created in a previous version of Illustrator. This legacy text must be updated before you can edit it.
    • Select Update to update all text objects in the document.
    • Select OK to update the text objects later. Learn how to update legacy text.

    CS to CC2023 (27.6)

    Dialog 1: The file contains text created in an older version of Illustrator. Updates in the text layout may have changed some character positions.

     

    Dialog 2: This file contains text created in an older version of Illustrator. Updates in the text layout may have caused changes in some character positions, or line breaks.
    • Select Cancel to stop opening the file.
    • Select OK to open the file with updated text.

    27.7 or later

    This file contains text created in an older version of Illustrator. Updates in the text layout may have caused changes in some character positions, or line breaks.
    • Select Review Changes to preserve and review the old layout.
    • Select Update to continue working with the updated text layout. 
    • Select Cancel to stop opening the file.
Limitations
  • The new text engine will automatically update text with effects, but it cannot be previewed in the Reflow Viewer panel.
  • Reflow Viewer is incompatible with outlined text as it doesn't contain actual text information.
  • Your system will disable Reflow Viewer for text objects with missing fonts. 

Reflow Viewer panel options

llustrator workspace showing the Reflow Viewer panel, with options to review and highlight text layout changes using magenta and light blue colors.
The Reflow Viewer panel open in Adobe Illustrator

Option

Description

Mark Affected Text

Displays a shield   on text objects with an updated text layout.

Review Text Layout Changes

Shows changes in text layout.
For:

  • Entire Document: Shows changes across the entire document.
  • Selected Text: Shows changes in selected text objects

Display    

Toggles display between old and new text layouts.    
View: Shows updated areas 

  • Original Text: Displays only old text layout. Text colors can be customized.
  • Original and Updated Text: Overlays old and new text layouts. The default color for the old layout is magenta, and the default color for the new layout is cyan.
  • Updated Text: Displays text layout with the current version of text layout. Text colors can be customized.

Highlight Text Layout Changes

Highlights changes in text layout.

  • Line Break: Displays changes in line breaks with red brackets for both old and new text layouts. 
  • Glyph Width: Displays changes in character spacing with pink markers. (Kerning and tracking changes will be marked).
  • Line Height: Displays changes in line height.

Work with the Reflow Viewer plugin

Adobe developed the Reflow Viewer plugin modules to fix functionality issues. The plugin allows you to resave files from older versions to be compatible with the feature and supports batch processing for multiple files.

Install plugin

  1. Download and copy the plugin into the Plug-ins folder located in the Illustrator application folder.

    Get file
    macOS
    Get file
    Windows

  2. Launch Illustrator.

Use plugin for a single file

  1. Open the .ai file for which you want to save text information.

  2. Select File > Save with updated text layout information > Save As.

    The system will automatically save the file with a new name.

Use plugin for batch processing files

  1. After launching Illustrator, select File > Save with updated text layout information > Batch Update.

  2. Select the folder containing the .ai files.

    The system will save the .ai files in the specified folder with new names, and a log file containing the save results will populate in the same folder.

Tip:
  • Turn off Save in Background before using the plugin.
  • When you save a file, the PDF compatibility option is enabled by default. To disable it, select Save As and save your files.
  • Ensure all fonts are loaded on your system when using the plugin to save your files.

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