How importing text from Illustrator to InDesign ?

[Anabispo]

How importing text from Illustrator to InDesign, kepping it editable ?

[Steve Werner · Accepted solution]

If you choose the text in Illustrator using the Text tool, you can copy the (unformatted) text to the clipboard. In InDesign, make a text frame or click in a text frame and choose Paste.

Sadly, there is no way to retain the formatting on the text, but it is still editable. InDesign and Illustrator have incompatible text engines.

[pentagramwookie]

Making InDesign and Illustrator text engines compatible would be a great feature. Anywhere to vote for that?

[pentagramwookie]

Okay actually, in Indesign CC 2023 these Clipboard Handling settings work for what I was trying to do. Not sure if it helps anyone else! At least it retains the font.

 

[bryand56122006]

THANK YOU SO MUCH, THIS WORKS FOR ME TOO.

YOU HAVE TO CREATE A TEXT BOX IN INDESIGN IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN THE SAME TEXT FORMAT FROM OTHER APP LIKE FROM ILLUSTRATOR.

I'VE BEEN STRUGGLING ALL THIS TIME. AGAIN THANK YOU SO MUCH

[Mike Witherell]

Generally you can only copy n paste. But...

What if you wanted to preserve the look by means of Illustrator's paragraph styles? They don't directly export, yet here is a work-around:

You *might* try to Save As the Illustrator file to PDF; open the PDF in Acrobat Pro; choose Save As Other... to a Word doc (Acrobat XI); then file>place that. Oddly, you will get different generic paragraph style names, but the editable text will be tagged with paragraph styles.

I wish it were more harmonious than this work-around!

[bonnseye]

Seems like such a basic expectation…that you can paste formatted text from one Adobe app to another. You CAN paste formatted text from Illustrator into Photoshop…why is Photoshop smarter than InDesign when it comes to typography. Absolutely confounding.

[Willi Adelberger]

You have to buy a 3rd party plugin like ID2PDF. It will convert PDFs (and this means also AI files) to InDesign.

[Mike Witherell]

Hi Willi,

I think you mean Markzware PDF2DTP for $199.00

[Willi Adelberger]

Yes.

[Brussobaum5ECF]

"they have incopatible textengines"

and you are all just completely fine with that right?  wtf.

Adobe is not able to change that thing for 10+ years because F*** it!

Copy text from one program to  another with styling is so basic even wordpad can do it.

What a joke.

[BobLevine]

So use Wordpad.

[Benji-11]

This is not a good answer to users that pay money. Copying and pasting are simple tasks. Also this is one of my problems too. I hope you undrestand what I mean.

[abel54321]

Yes. This is really disappointing. When I copy text from Adobe Illustrator to to Photoshop and After Effects it retains the text formatting. I was really shocked to find that this is not the case for Indesign when  it seems like they are closest to each other (Vector programs) and used widely for creating material for print.

[Markcq]

Not a good answer... I have copy in Illustrator that needs to go into an InDesign layout and now I have to retype it, because of a stupid incompatibility that Adobe had 25 years to fix. I can't even copy and paste the text from Ilustrator to Notes, Pages, or Word... so either way I'm f***ed and have to retype it, or I have to save it as a PDF and then copy it from there.

Times like this when I want to completely make the transition to Affinity. I'm already 80% there, but this little glitch is pushing me to 90%. 🤬

[BobLevine]

If you can't C/P from Illustrator to anything you have a serious problem that has nothing to do with InDesign.

[Markcq]

Yes, it's called Adobe Illustrator 26.2.1.

I don't remember this ever being an issue and I've been using Illustrator since 1994.

[Greta5C58]

Still wrong answers, BobLevine. It has to do with both Adobe apps. The same problem persists other way around when trying to export formatted text from InDesign to Illustrator. It is the end of 2022 already. And there's still no ability to transfer basic formatting between two apps that are marketed as industry standard for design with extensive text work. 

[BobLevine]

@Greta5C58 What's wrong about it? The poster said that pasting from Illy to anything didn't work and now you completely twist that into C/P between AI and ID. Those are two separate issues.

I'm not a big Illy user but C/P between AI and ID seems to be vastly improved with the 2023 versions. With the clipboard handling set properly I can C/P text between AI and ID and it comes across as properly formatted.

[Laubender]

You can also export your text to a text file using Illustrator.

No retyping necessary.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Greta5C58]

Using Wordpad doesn't help if you want to import formatted text from InDesign to AI. It is placed as plain text even if it is formatted in InDesign before exporting as RTF.

[BobLevine]

Not if you set up your clipboard prefs correctly! It works fine.

InDesign formatted text, copied to clipboard.

Pasted to Illustrator:

Illy clipboard prefs:

InDesign clipboard prefs:

[pentagramwookie]

Wordpad doesn't work for that, at least not for what I'm usually trying to do.

[rehana36276218]

affinity publisher is coming bro wait.... adobe

[Laubender · Accepted solution]

Hi Brussobaum5ECF,

you answered a thread from 2015.

Nowadays you could transfer formatted text as shared Text assets from Illustrator to InDesign through CC Libraries:

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/creative-cloud-libraries-sync-share-assets.html

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )