As far as merging layers goes, you can select the layers, then select “merge selected” from the layers panel fly-out menu. That won’t merge the text into one textfield, but it will get everything on one layer. Getting the text into one textfield and keeping the spacing between the original textfields is much more difficult to do.

Is there a way to merge text layers while keeping their format intact? Of course keeping the text editable at the same time. This script is very useful but it seems to still justify the type requiring one to re-layout and format. I have pages and pages of files that I need to condense with layers of 500 and above. I will then export them to a layered PSD format and bring them into After Effects. Have any ideas? Thank you for this great script and any input you can provide for my dilemma.

Sincerely,
Edward

Hi Justin,

Thanks for looking into this! The file contains something called a Causal Loop Diagram, something used for System Dynamics analysis. These diagrams usually carry a number of variables (this sample has fewer)

These variable names are simply text, but because each variable name is usually made up of 2-4 lines, each variable name is made up of 2-4 text boxes when pasted into illustrator. Your merge tool seamlessly merges these names into single text boxes, but the merge script needs to be run individually for each and every variable name.

Can you think of a way to have every single “grouping of words” be merged into single text boxes by running a script only once?

thanks! again, we are very grateful for your script and are using it even when we run it for each variable; it STILL saves us time =)

thanks for this amazing script. i work with a lot of diagrams that need to be pasted into illustrator. the diagrams usually have hundreds of variable names, with each variable name being split into multiple text boxes. this script allowed me to merge those boxes so that each variable name is now a single text box.

however, the diagram has hundreds of these variables, so merging each of these individually still takes quite some time, and selecting all text, then merging, would make one massive text box w/ all variable names, which is not what i’m looking for. is there an easy way to edit this script so that it can find each grouping of words (which would consitute a single variable), and run merges for all of them?

merging hundreds of times all at one go would be amazing and save me countless hours.

thanks!

Jenni.