Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How-To, and today I'm going to show you how to sort of force
expand an object in Illustrator. This is something you can do if Expand and Expand Appearance,
or even Outline Stroke, aren't working for you. Alright, let's get started.
Normal ways to expand should probably be tried before doing this one. Now, Illustrator
is sometimes glitchy and it just won't expand everything out using the normal tools. But since
I wasn't able to find a good example for you that shows this glitch, I'm going to just use a chart,
which also isn’t expandable in the normal ways. Usually, you can just ungroup it. So,
if you've tried a few ways to expand, and it still won't expand, you can select the object, come
up here to Object, and Flatten Transparency. And then I usually just leave these settings the same,
but I'll make sure Convert All Text to Outlines and Convert All Strokes to Outlines are selected.
And then I'll say, "Okay." So, now everything in the object you selected should be expanded.
Now, using this Flatten Transparency is actually a last resort because doing it this way actually
adds unnecessary anchor points. Honestly, for me, I haven't found that to be too big of a deal. But
if that's something that doesn't work for you, try these other options first. I'm going to undo that
and get it back into its graph format. The first one to try is normal Expand,
and then after that, try Expand Appearance. Now, you might have to do this several times depending
on how your object is created. Now, I have a few objects on my screen here. First is this shape,
and if you try to expand a simple shape like this, it's not going to work because this is
already expanded all the way out that it can be. There's nothing to expand. All we have is
a fill here. This is already in its simplest format, so I'm just going to delete this one.
This second object is a stroke only, so we can see over here it has a stroke and
no fill. And I'm going to zoom in close to this. You can see that there's a line,
a path, but it doesn't go all the way out to the edges here. If we hit Command+Y or Control+Y,
you can see it's just a single path. I'm going to hit Command+Y or Control+Y to get back. So,
if we want to have it expand all the way out to the edge here, we can come up here to Object,
Expand. I'm going to choose Fill and Stroke and say "Okay." And now, you can see that the points
go all the way out to the edge. I'm going to hit Command+Y or Control+Y, and you can see the
difference here. I'm going to undo and redo just to show you what's happened after we expanded.
I'll hit Command+Y or Control+Y to get back. Now, when you do this when you expand your stroke, you
won't be able to edit that stroke anymore. So, I'm going to undo. I'll usually just hold Option+click
and drag a copy off the side of my artboard just so I'll always have it. If I need to change the
stroke later, I can easily do that with the stroke panel here. So, I'll go ahead and expand this by
hitting Command+E or Control+E, and that's the same thing as going to Object and doing it that
way. Okay, so now we have a fill only. This one's a stroke and this one's a fill, as you can see.
And now this one is in its simplest form. The next thing to try is Expand Appearance. And I've got a
shape down here, the exact same shape, but it has a lot of appearance elements applied. Now,
this and this are all on one single object, so if I hit Command-Y or Control-Y, you can
see that just this object is there. So we have a stroke on top of a fill on top of another stroke,
and that makes up this part. And then we have this other stroke, other fill, an orange fill, and a
gray stroke underneath, and that makes up the second part. These parts have been transformed,
so if I click on that transform part, you can see it's been moved 30 points horizontally and
30 points vertically. And actually, this orange fill and the stroke both have that
same transform applied. Although I only have one piece, it looks like there are two pieces.
So let's say we want to expand this out. I'm going to go to Object > Expand Appearance. This time
you'll notice that Object > Expand wasn't available. And now if I hit Command-Y or
Control-Y, you see we have two things. But if I zoom in, this is not expanded all the way out.
Otherwise, there would be a point here, a point here, a point here, like that. So I'm going to go
ahead and come up here to Object > Expand. And this time we'll do the same thing we just did
to the stroke over there. Now you can see we have all these pieces expanded. Now, sometimes you'll
have even more things to expand, and in that case, just keep going back and forth between
Object > Expand and Object > Expand Appearance until they are all completely expanded out.
The third way to expand is to ungroup something, and this works on charts and graphs like this one
here. Now, if you select this and ungroup it, you'll lose all the data that you inputted.
So let's come up here to Object > Graph > and Data, and I'll show you what I mean.
So this graph is connected to this data, and if we change this to say 30 and then apply the changes,
you can see the change here in the graph. Now, if we ungroup or flatten transparency on this graph,
we will no longer have these numbers, and we won't be able to change anything with
the graph easily anyway. So I'm going to make a copy of this. I'll hold Option and just drag it
right off the edge here. And now we can ungroup with Shift-Command-G or Shift-Control-G. You can
also come up here to Object > Ungroup right here. Now we can rotate. Before, when it's like this,
you can't rotate using the Free Transform tool. You can use the Rotate tool, but the Free
Transform tools don't work very well on a graph that's not been expanded. The fourth way to expand
something is to create outlines on it. So text is a good example of this. You can come up here to
Type > Create Outlines right here. And when you do that, this also makes your text not editable.
So if I hit Command-Y or Control-Y, now it's made up of points. If I hit undo, it's typable text.
So it might make sense here to make a copy off to the side too, then outline your text. You can do
this with Shift-Command-O or Shift-Control-O too. Now, you can also expand text. So if you wanted
to, you could come up here and do "Object > Expand," and it will work exactly the same as
"Create Outlines." The last thing to try is "Object > Path > Outline Stroke." Of course,
you'll have to have something selected that has a stroke to use this. Now,
I rarely use this because usually, one of these other options that I've shown you works okay. So
this one is a possibility, but I personally don't use it very much. Now, if you're still having
trouble getting something to expand, please leave a comment in the comment section below,
and I'll try to help you out. Alright, if you like this video and you want to see more videos like
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every time a new video comes out. Alright, I'll see you in the next video. Thank you!!