Text imported from Freehand

Question

I have an old Freehand file I have imported to Illustrator cs4 and then open and save with Illustrator cs6.

In Illustrator cs6 most of the text boxes have problems. The text overflows the text boxes, I mean that part of the text cannot be seen. For instance logos are without the last letter. If I adjust the text boxes the text changes. It behaves like a point text (but as far I understand, in point text the text fits inside automatically)

The only solution I find is to type (or copy-paste) everything again in Illustrator with point text or area text, it does not matter. But it is a lot of work. Is there any other solution?

Answer 1

I recently converted 40 old FreeHand 3 files to Illustrator CC-2014. Since FreeHandMX can't open these natively, I had to use FreeHand 8 (via Sheepshaver.) I was then able to open these directly into AI using this new converter plugin: FreeHand Interface Plugin

I also exported the FreeHand 8 files from FHMX as a PDF, and there is a difference in text handling. Both ways worked but you might experiment to see which is best. However, the text was still "live editable" in both cases.

Answer 2

It's not ideal, and not without a tonne of its own problems, but you could try pdf export from Freehand. Then Place into Illustrator.

You'll probably lose most editing ability and have to treat just about everything as curves.