By the end of this article, you’ll become a super pro at aligning text in Adobe Illustrator.

What Is Text Align In Illustrator?

Text alignment or aligning text means adjusting text to the same guideline or arranging the text to line up against a straight line on one or more sides. This straight line is known as a guide or reference line, which also means it is an imaginary line.

This guideline can be against the left margin, center, or right side, depending on the requirements of your design. Want to know how to align text to a line in Illustrator? Text alignment can be done in a few ways:

1. Align sentences of text within one text frame

2. Align text box to other text boxes

3. Align text to selection and objects

4. Align text to the artboard

Align sentences of text within one text box

Here are two different orientations of text alignment you can create for sentences in one text box in Illustrator:

1. Align text horizontally
2. Align text vertically

For you to align your text based on any of these, you will have to open up the relevant Illustrator panel to take advantage of the alignment tools available.

Where Is The Alignment Tool In Illustrator?

There isn’t just one align tool in Illustrator. When creating any design, there are so many variables to aligning text that Illustrator has come up with all kinds of alignment options for you to choose from. Sometimes you may simply wish to shrink or enlarge text so that it can align to an object, image, or to other text.

You can find the align menu and use the functions by accessing these places:

1. Control Panel

2. Properties Panel

3. Top Menu

This also brings me to go in-depth into the different ways of aligning text in this Illustrator tutorial.

How to Align Text In Adobe Illustrator

Here are the 5 best and easiest ways to align text in Adobe Illustrator:

1. Using the Align Panel to Align Text in Adobe Illustrator

There are times when you want to align sentences or lines of text that are in separate text boxes. In this case, you can use the tools in the Align panel.

The first thing is to open the Align Panel by selecting Window in the top menu, then select Align in the drop-down menu. Or select Window > Align.

Align Text Boxes To Each Other

When you align text boxes to each other, you will only take reference of the positions of the text boxes and nothing else. This method is the same as how you align objects in Illustrator. Here’s how you do it:

Step 1: Select the Text Boxes

First, click on the text boxes you want to align while holding down the Shift key on the keyboard. You will see the bounding box of both text boxes showing up if they have been selected.

Step 2: Select Align to Selection

Go to the Align To section in the Align panel and select the button that says Align to Selection.

Step 3: Select The Alignment

Next, go to the Align Objects in the Align palette. If you want all text boxes to align to the left, select the Horizontal Align Left button.

If you want the text boxes to align centered to each other, select the button that says Horizontal Align Center.

Select the Horizontal Align Right button if you want the text boxes to align to the right.

2. Paragraph Panel

There are times when you have a chunk of text in one text box and you would like to have them all lined up horizontally on one side, center, or both sides. In this case, you can use the tools in the Paragraph Alignment panel.

Align Text Horizontally In One Text Box

Step 1: Select Your Text

Click on your text box to select the text you wish to align.

Step 2: Select The Alignment Option

Open the Paragraph panel by selecting Window in the top menu, then select Type and Paragraph (Window > Type > Paragraph).

You can have one side of all text sentences aligned by selecting the following buttons on the Paragraph panel:

1. Left-aligned

2. Center-aligned

3. Right-aligned

You can also have sentences aligned on both sides of the text frame with the Justification buttons. Here are a few ways to justify text in Illustrator:

1. Justify with last line aligned left

2. Justify with last line aligned center

3. Justify with last line aligned right

4. Justify all lines

3. Tabs Ruler

In some cases, you may not want to have your text automatically aligned, but you may want to how to align text around a graphic or how to align text with bullets in Illustrator. You also don’t want to use the Wrap Text tool because you want to align specific text to specific areas. In this case, you will use the Tabs Ruler. Here’s how you do it:

Custom-Align Your Text

Step 1: Open the Tabs Ruler

Open the Tabs Ruler by selecting Window in the top menu and selecting the Type menu and Tabs in the drop-down menu.

You can also use keyboard shortcuts by pressing Shift + Command + T on Mac

or Shift + Ctrl + T on Windows.

Step 2: Indent Text

Select the text box if you want to indent all the text in the same text box.

Next, move the mini triangle icons (Left indent) in the Tabs Ruler to the position you want your selected text to move to. The triangle at the top controls the first sentence while the bottom triangle indents the second sentence onwards.

Step 3: Adjust Tabs

If you wish to shift each sentence to different positions, select the specific sentence by placing the text cursor with the Type Tool on the front of the first letter of the sentence.

Then, drag the appropriate Tab-alignment button to any part along the ruler. Place a Tab character just next to the first letter of the sentence you’d like to indent. Do this by clicking once with the Type Tool and pressing the Tab key on the keyboard.

4. Area Type Options

Another question you may have is how to align text vertically in Illustrator within your text frame or text box while keeping it the same horizontally. This can be done using the Area Type Options. Here’s what you do:

Vertically Align Your Text To The Text Box

Step 1: Open Area Type Options

Select Type from the top menu and select Area Type Options from the drop-down menu.

💡 Pro Tip: If the Area Type Options is grayed out, it’s because the text box is Point Type. Just select the text box, go to Type in the top menu, and select Convert to Area Type in the drop-down menu. Next, go back to Type menu again and you will be able to select Area Type Options….

Step 2: Select Vertical Alignment

Go to the section that says “Align” and select any of the following: Top, Center, Bottom, Justify. Here’s what you can do:

1. Align Text to Top

2. Align Text to Center Vertically

3. Align Text to Bottom

Make sure the Preview section is checked so that you can view the action in real-time.

Click the OK button once you are happy with the results.

5. Point Text

Sometimes, you find that when you use the Align tools, your text is still not where you want them to be aligned.

For example, you may want your text to be exactly in the center of another text, shape, object, or artboard. But even when you have selected the horizontally and vertically centered button in the Align panel, your text is still slightly off-center from the other text or object.

how to perfectly align text in Illustrator?

In this case, you want to align your text such that the reference point is exactly on the outermost edge of the text letters and not the edge of the text box. Illustrator has Smart Guides or invisible snap-to guides that help you know if your text and objects are aligned or not.

However, by default, all text boxes are slightly bigger than the size of the text itself and the Smart Guides function uses the edge of the text box as a reference. This causes a gap between the text box and the edge of the text. The term for this is called Area Text.

In the past, one of the popular ways to align text is to first set up the guideline, then Create Outlines on the text and align them. Thanks to the latest updated release of Adobe Illustrator, there’s no need to do that anymore.

I’m sure you’d prefer to align text without embedding text, expanding text, or creating outlines because there’s a risk that you can’t undo the outline and you can’t edit the text anymore.

What’s the point of successfully aligning text when you can’t make changes to the text in the future?

If you want to align text perfectly to an object, artboard, or another text box perfectly without creating outlines, you will have to first convert your text to Point Text.

Convert Text to Point Text

Step 1: Convert Text To Point Type

Select the text, and go to Type in the top menu. Then select Convert to Point Type.

Step 2: Select Point Text

Next, go to Window in the top menu, and select Align to open the Align panel.

Then, select the hamburger menu to show options by clicking the three lines on the top right corner of the Align panel.

Select Align to Glyph Bounds and select Point Text.

Now your text is converted to Point Text, ready to align perfectly to a shape, object, or artboard.

Align Text Perfectly To Object

In this example, I want to create a button and I would like my text to be smacked right in the center of the shape.

Here’s how you align text centered to a shape, object, or another text perfectly in Illustrator:

Step 1: Select Text and Object

With your text converted to Point Type, select both the text and object or another text you want to align with by clicking on them while holding down the Shift key.

Step 2: Select Align to Selection

Next, open the Align panel and select the Align to Selection button.

Step 3: Align Text Perfectly To Object or Shape

In this example, since I want my text to be positioned in the center of the box, I will select Horizontal Align Center and Vertically Align Center in the Align Objects section.

You will see that it will be exactly in the center. If your text is not converted to Point Text but remained as Area Text, using the alignment buttons won’t help it be exactly where you want.

Align Text Box To The Artboard

Sometimes you want your text to align in a certain way with the artboard. Once you’ve converted them to Point Type and Point Text, here are the next steps:

Step 1: Select the Point Text Box

In this example, I want this text box to be aligned with the artboard. First, select this text box by clicking on it once.

Step 2: Select Align to Artboard

Next, go to the Align To section in the Align panel and select the button that says Align to Artboard.

Step 3: Select The Alignment to Artboard

Go to the Align Objects section. You can select any of the Horizontal and Vertical Align options, your text box will move to a position you want relative to the artboard.

Select the Horizontal Align Center and Vertical Align Center buttons if you want the text to be in the middle of your artboard both vertically and horizontally.

In this example, if I were to select Horizontal Align Left and Vertical Align Top, the edge of the tallest letter and the left-most letter is perfectly aligned to the edge of the artboard.

Text Alignment In Illustrator and FAQ

Final Thoughts: Align Text In Illustrator

As you’ve seen from the various alignment tools in Illustrator, you can create amazing layouts and designs with the given alignment actions.

The cool thing is, not only are they easy to use, but you can also align text perfectly to other objects, shapes, and text.

There’s no need for you to convert your text to vector format at all. You are only limited by your imagination.