Why your dynamic text ain’t showing up in flash.

I’ve run into this issue probably one billion times. You’ve got a dynamic text field either on the stage or created through actionscript and the text simply isn’t showing up no matter what you try. So I decided to make a simple list of each thing I try that ever fixes this issue. You probably try all these too, but I figured it’d be nice to have them all in one place. Probably would be better as a flow chart but hey bullet lists are easy.

  • Font name
    You are setting the font name of the TextFormat object in actionscript to something that doesn’t perfectly match the font name Flash is expecting
  • Bold, italic, etc
    You are setting the bold, italic, etc, properties of the TextFormat object to something that doesn’t perfectly match the what flash is expecting.
  • setTextFormat before setting text property
    You are assigning the TextFormat object via setTextFormat() after you’ve put your text in the TextField. It needs to be done before. (or you can use setNewTextFormat)
  • Font size too small
    You’ve screwed up the math somewhere when calculating font size and the text is there, but just very, very small. Try tracing out the font size.
  • Text field is working, but not visible
    The text field is there and working, but it’s either off the stage, invisible or underneath something else. Set border = true to find out if the text field is even showing up where it needs to be. If not check the alpha, x, y, and visible properties.
  • Fonts not embedded
    The fonts are not embedded either via actionscript or via the TextField’s properties panel.

Am I missing one? Let me know.