I have a hymn I am working on. 4 stanzas need to be typed into a text frame at the end of the piece. I have the text frame created. But there’s a problem. It won’t type anything.
Reading through other peoples’ somewhat similar issues, I came across this piece of advice:
“If you want a chunk of text on the page (not moving with the music, you go to Engrave Mode and make a Text Frame and type into it.”
That doesn’t help. It won’t let me type into the text frame at all. I’ve double clicked it and found how I do all the features to the text. I can change the font, add italics, change the spacing, etc etc. But I’m not able to type anything in. If I try, it does nothing. If I click again as I am in Engrave mode, it simply shows me that, yep, there is an empty text frame there.
I highly advise you guys to fix this and make it simple, like a simple text box. This is way too complicated to do something other programs can do with one click.
So, you create the Text Frame and double click on it. Then you attempt to type or do you try to choose a style or some other function in the text tool bar first? If selecting something in the tool bar first, I’m sure you realize that one needs to then single click in the text box proper to begin entering the text.
I’m not trying to be patronizing but trying to validate your exact steps. Another option might be to upload the file here so we can try to determine what’s happening. I’ve found the text frame to be very easy and intuitive but my brain works a little differently sometimes.
At least on my Windows system, this is not necessary – even after clicking things on the formatting toolbar, the caret remains active and focused in the text frame.
You are correct. I guess I just do that without thinking. Thanks for challenging me. The only clicking required is to double click the text frame to begin entering text.
Ok. First, thank you to all who have answered to try to help. I do appreciate it even if I’m flustered.
Second, Mr. @Rawmuse, you can rest assured, I can type into text boxes in other programs. It’s not a hardware problem.
Third, I opened a new doc, tried making a text frame there, and what do you know? It worked. So I got rid of the text frame I put in, tried another, and now it works. What’s the deal?
The only thing I can think of is that with the first one, I expanded it a lot because I needed a bigger box for my text. I had to reposition the screen so it took in more of the space I needed so I could create the text box there. Is that why it didn’t work? I can’t expand the box first if I want to type?
Anyway, thanks for helping me out. I still think this program needs to be simplified a lot. For example, just make the cursor / caret appear in the text frame immediately after making the text frame. So you don’t have to do a series of clicking. It’s just there.
It works for me to create the frame, resize it, then double click inside to enter text.
Some apps work this way, some don’t. A counter argument is that sometimes you want to get all your frames placed and sized before you enter anything, and if the caret were active immediately after creating a text frame, you’d need to hit escape or click somewhere else before manipulating it. I’m not saying that one approach is better than the other, just that they’re both legitimate use cases, and an application has to decide which way to go – thereby pleasing some users and frustrating others!
Not so. You could make it so the cursor / caret is still there after expanding. And if you didn’t want to type, you could click somewhere else. Which, most people would do anyway if they didn’t want to type. They’d go into write mode, or print, or whatever.
When you expand the frame, the border of the frame is active not the content. This allows for keyboard users to move or otherwise manipulate the size or position of the object selected. Having to click inside the frame activates the text area so that one can enter text. If the app automatically switched to “text mode” from “frame size/location mode,” it could get very tedious to achieve the size one wants – especially if one uses the properties panel to set the dimensions.
Yes, it’s an extra click for some while a convenience for others – but it’s only a click (or keypress). Knowing that there is a reason for not doing it in a way that is preferable to a particular workflow doesn’t make it wrong or even completely undesirable!
— Jim
