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mcram
March 11, 2021

Text converted to vectors should be grouped by letter

  • March 11, 2021
  • 11 replies
  • 6119 views

Currently, when text is converted to vectors by flattening, it is rendered as one single vector object. Double clicking reveals all bezier nodes. For complicated letter forms, this can make it difficult to move/manipulate individual letters.

It would be more useful if flattened text were rendered as a group of individual letter paths with each letter’s layer named that particular character. Bezier points could still be accessed by double clicking the letter form.

Hopefully the image will help clarify:

11 replies

Joshua_Mao
March 22, 2022

not sure if people are still following this but I found a workaround -

  1. Flatten Text
  2. Export as SVG
  3. Drag SVG back into Figma

Somehow, this process groups the vectors by letter within figma

mcram
mcramAuthor
March 23, 2022

Excellent workaround! Thank you!

Hey Figma friends… seems like an easy fix (what do I know though). Can you tidy this one up?

Josh
Former Community Manager
March 23, 2022

Oh interesting! Thanks for sharing the feedback and workaround. We’ll pass this along and see what we can do here. 🙂

mcram
mcramAuthor
October 17, 2022

The results of the workaround posted by Joshua_Mao is exactly how this should work.

Romanr
New Participant
April 26, 2023
  1. Flatten text
  2. select a letter, cut.
  3. create empty frame , right click , paste here, fit frame to selection.
mcram
mcramAuthor
April 27, 2023

Yes, but it is not always so easy if the letters are complex or have overlaps or lots of letters. It would be so much more efficient to have the letters broken up separately. The SVG workaround is useful but again would be better if not necessary.

Mika_Kuitunen1
August 30, 2023

I just ran into this while converting an icon font into a set of vectors, the export as SVG and re-import was a helpful workaround but a more flexible flatten would be even better. In my case I needed the characters as individual frames so perhaps building some options into it would be useful as well.

mcram
mcramAuthor
October 6, 2023

Well, friends. Figma has announced today that this will be fixed! Huzzah!! Thanks, Figma.

Romanr
New Participant
January 30, 2024

@mcram where did you see that?
4 months later doesn’t look like it was changed. Converted text is the same as before.
By the way there was some plugin that done that.

mcram
mcramAuthor
January 30, 2024

Hey @Romanr! It is totally fixed! Just choose “outline stroke” on your text and you get a group of separated, vector letter shapes. If you prefer the old way, with one vector shape of all the text, choose “flatten” instead. Awesome!