Linked Text Boxes
Additional Controls of the Text Box Frame
In addition to standard handles, the text box frame has two more controls located on the sides. They look like white squares when a text box is empty or partially empty.
The controls indicate the state of the text box and to create linked text boxes.
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Control
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State
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Meaning of the Control
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Actions
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Left
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Blank
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A blank control means the beginning of text.
The text box is a single one or the first one in a thread of linked text boxes. |
Click on the control activates a tool for adding a linked text box. The new box will stay before the current one in the thread. |
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Arrow inside
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An arrow means that text begins in another text box and continues in the current one.
The text box is one of multiple boxes in the thread, but not the first. |
No actions. |
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Right
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Blank
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A blank control means that text ends in the current text box. There is enough space for text in the box.
The text box is a single one or the last one in the thread. |
Click on the control activates a tool for adding a linked text box. The new box will stay after the current one in the thread.
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Arrow outside
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An arrow means that text continues in another text box linked to the current one.
The text box is not the last one in the thread. |
No actions. |
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Red plus
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A red plus means there is not enough space to show all of the text in the current text box.
The text box is a single one or the last one in the thread. |
Click on the control activates a tool for adding a linked text box. The new box will stay after the current one in the thread.
The invisible portion of the text will get into the new box. |
Linked Text Boxes and Flowing Text
You can create a thread of several linked text boxes. Text in such boxes can flow from one box into another when you resize text boxes, add or remove text boxes from the thread, or when you add or remove a part of text.
Linked text boxes are used for creating multi-column text. The linking lines shown in the picture below are not displayed by the program.
To add a linked text box, controls on the text box sides are used (see the table above).
To add a linked text box before the first one, click the left blank control (see the upper image in the table) of the first box and draw a new box.
To add a linked text box after the last one, click the red plus or right blank control of the box last in the thread, and draw a new box.
During the design process text borders may change their appearance but remain visible. Borders can be hidden by choosing Hide Object Borders from the View menu. To make them visible, use the View > Show Object Borders menu item. When text is selected its text box borders are always shown.
The Linked Text Box On The Next Page (Cmd-Opt-L) command from the Insert menu inserts a linked text box on the next page. Location and size of the new box will be same as the current text box has. If the current page is the last, a new page will be added to the document.
The command is useful to minimize the number of operations when you type text as in an ordinary text editor.