Editable text from CSV

[Dan Ebberts]

The only thing I can think of would be to use a script to either apply the text from the CSV (instead of using and expression), or to run after you have everything set up and have the script harvest the CSV-generated text and apply it directly to the source text property (and turn off the exrpession). Don’t know if using a script fits your workflow though…

[Matt Howarth]

Hi Dan, thanks for responding again. Yes I was already thinking that a script would be the way to go. I have never made a script for AE yet, but I was thinking this would be a good place to start. It’s the applying or harvesting of the text that I don’t know how to do and also getting it to ignore the formatting in the CSV file. By that I really mean the “new line” and paragraph alignment information, it’s seems to leave the character information alone (font and spacing). Thanks again.

[Dan Ebberts]

This is just a snippet to get you started. It assumes that your comp is active and the text layer is named “Text Layer 1”:

var myTextLayer = app.project.activeItem.layer("Text Layer 1");
var mySourceText = myTextLayer.property("ADBE Text Properties").property("ADBE Text Document");
var myTextDoc = mySourceText.value;
var myText = myTextDoc.text;
myText = myText.replace(/\r?\n|\r/g, ' '); // replace new lines with spaces
mySourceText.expressionEnabled = false;
myTextDoc.text = myText;
mySourceText.setValue(myTextDoc)

[Matt Howarth]

Dan, you are a star once again, thank you! : )