MX

Synchronising Text using Soft Groups
In some designs, you may find you need multiple text objects to always show the same text, but perhaps
using different styles. Animating text in an animation document is one example of this and mouse over
buttons which highlight when the mouse pointer is moved over them in a web browser is another.
Normally when you want to change the text shown on these objects, you'd need to edit each one
individually.
By adding such related text objects into a Soft Group, you can ensure that they will always show the
same text. To add the related text objects into a Soft Group, first make sure that they all already have
exactly the same text (otherwise they will not become synchronized). Then select them all using the
Selector Tool. Then select "Arrange" > "Apply soft group"
("Ctrl + Alt + G").
Now when the text is edited on one text object, the others will be updated automatically, even if they are
scattered across different layers (or in the case of animation documents, different frames) throughout your
document. Note that this synchronization still works even if some of the text objects are on locked or
invisible layers.
To ungroup a Soft Group, select "Arrange" > "Remove soft group" ("Ctrl + Alt + U"). See the Soft
Groups section of the Object Manipulation (Soft Groups, Soft Groups
) chapter for more information on Soft Groups.
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