Text Element paste does not prompt new or link.

[Rob_J]

I copied a Text Element from one form to over a dozen others to label some diagrams. I did this via copy/paste mostly because I had set the appearance (Font, Font Size, etc...) on the Text Element and did not want to do it over and over again. Unfortunately, when you do a copy / paste, the default action is to paste a link to the SAME Text Element. And, EA does NOT add the "Text Element" to the Project Browser tree so it is impossible to see that you are dealing with one element linked to every form vs. unique Text Elements. So, I chased myself in circles fixing diagram labels and wondering why they were always wrong. Only by going to the Element -> Find In Documents dialog can you see that you actually have the exact same element in several diagrams. I cannot find any way to "break" the link, changing the Text Elements into unique instances so I have an afternoon of busy work ahead of me.

I think the utility of sharing a single link across all documents might come in handy once in a while, but based on why someone would use a "Text Element", by default I think it should create new/unique instance every time unless you explicity want a universally shared one.

Rob

[RoyC]

If you want a set of elements with the same font, color, size, style etc but each being a unique entity, you can create the "master" element in a template diagram in the template package (which you create yourself).

Look for Template      Package, Settings in the Help index.