The Text Flow Tool is for setting up flow links between any sequence of columns and paths.
NOTE: Flow linking also enables paths for text entry.
To select the Text Flow Tool click its icon in the Toolkit panel, or choose menu option Edit > Select Tool > Text Flow Tool (or keyboard shortcut ⌃F Control-F).
Select the Text Flow Tool.
Here's a micro movie that demonstrates the following four flow link activities:
1. flow linking a column to another column
2. deleting that flow link
3. flow linking a column to a path
4. flow linking that path to its own column
NOTE: The text that appears in the movie as the containers are flow linked is overflow text from the first container.
Text flow icons indicate the existence of flow links and text overflows, for columns and paths, as follows:
text outflow
text inflow
text overflow
You can display text flow icons by selecting one or more text container(s) using the Pointer Tool.
The following example shows the text flows present after completing flow link step 1. of the above micro movie.
It shows a text outflow from the hexagon's column (orange icon) and the corresponding text inflow into the curved shape's column (green icon). The curved shape is also showing a text overflow (red icon), warning that some of the text in the flow has not been displayed because it won’t fit into the column space available.
When flow linking a source (upstream) text container to a target (downstream) container, any existing text in the target container will be appended to any existing text in the source container. No text content is lost or deleted.
When flow linking a source (upstream) text container to a target (downstream) text flow that spans multiple text containers, here's what happens when flow linking to the second or subsequent text container in this target text flow:
No existing text in the target flow will be appended to the source container.
No text content is lost or deleted - all existing text in the target flow is retained, and continues to flow from the first text container in this text flow. It's useful to think of all text in a flow as always belonging to whichever container holds the start (also referred to as the head) of the flow.
If you have a text flow that spans several linked text containers here's what happens if you select some but not all of the containers with the Pointer Tool and delete them:
No text content is lost or deleted - the existing flow is rejoined automatically to bridge across each of the deleted containers.
If a shape containing the head of a text flow is being deleted, the head is moved to the first available downstream container not being deleted.