mr314

In this case you do not highlight the text but instead you select it!

What's the difference you might be wondering.

Highlighting the text or inserting the text cursor is for working with text at the character level and selecting it is working wit at the type level.

The former is for creating and editing text and he latter is treating text as art.

If you want to expand or create outlines or flatten the transparency (similar to expanding) you have to select the text with the selection tool and not the type  tool.

The selection tool is either the black arrow or the white arrow or the lasso tool.

So if you highlight like this the expand command will not work

If on te other hadn you select the text with a selection tool you will be able to expand or create outlines

I am not certain how helpful the help files are on the subject but you might want to search out te differences in the different uses of type in Illustrator.

Hope this helps solve your issue.

That is not the case Jacob when you highlight text with the type tool expand isn't grayed out. It just doesn'5294))?

We know how hey selected the text they wrote we highlighted the the text, and if they had selected it with the selection tool then expand would work but if they highlighted it with the text tool then it would not work.

So it is pretty clear how they selected the text and we kknow they are not using the version you are using since they are a noob! Not too likely they would be on v10.

That would be kind of a very, very, very long shot, won't you say.

I thkn they will be back tomorrow.

@ Jacob Bugge.

You're right. There must be a version difference. I don't know about CS6, as I don't have it. But on the machines here, in CS3, 4, and 5, on both Windows and Mac, highlighting text with the text tool does not gray out Object > Expand but, as the OP stated, clicking it it doesn't do anything, either.