SUBSCRIPT - GREYED OUT
The ‘grayed out’ text sounds like a FIELD.
Select the grayed out text then take a screenshot. It would also be helpful to include the Properties Palette with in the screenshot while the text is still selected.
Upload the screenshot for evaluation.
Chicagolooper
Thanks for your upload.
That grayed out text is definitely a FIELD.
In your particular case, that field is related to an object such as a closed polygon. The Field is acquiring a specific Property, the AREA of the polygon so when the Field is inserted into mtext, it displays the acquired AREA. The field is preceded by 'Allowable Area =' and followed by 'SF' and provides an efficient way to recalculate the area if the geometry of the polygon ever changes. The Area of that Field is consistent with the area that would be displayed in the Properties Palette if the polygon was selected.
A practical example would be the Area of a two-car garage in mtext. If the owner of the home decides to upgrade to a 3-car garage during the preliminary design stage, the garage's footprint can be stretched to accommodate an additional car. The field would update and display the new square footage after regen all (REA) command.
BTW, whoever created that Field may review the drawing at a later date and wonder what happened to it if you have deleted it. Jus sayin'.
Chicagolooper
@ChicagoLooper wrote:
The ‘grayed out’ text sounds like a FIELD. ....
They're not talking about gray text content within the Mtext object, which could indicate a Field. They're talking about the options in the Mtext Formatting tab. To illustrate with much clearer images than theirs:
When in the editor, but with no text characters selected, some options are unavailable:
whereas, with some text selected, those options are activated:
It does seem a little unequal that you can pick on [for example] the Bold icon with no text selected, and what you then type at the cursor position will be Bold, and likewise with some of the others, but you can't similarly set the superscript or subscript options to be "current." But I don't know of any way around it.
sadly @Billy5UNA8 I can't do much about your hurt feelings, but your screenshot indicates what I wrote to be true
You can go ask Autodesk for a change here https://www.autodesk.com/company/contact-us/product-feedback it may happen in later versions in 2-3-5-10years (hopefully sooner)
BTW, here is how to do screenshots without all that cut/paste into Adobe InDesign then output to PDF that you used https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13776/windows-use-snipping-tool-to-capture-screenshots (just save to PNG or JPG).
HTH
@pendean wrote:
.... how to do screenshots without all that .... snipping-tool .... (just save to PNG or JPG).
You don't even need to save a snip to a file at all. Whether done with the older Snipping Tool or the newer Snip & Sketch tool, it goes immediately into the clipboard, and you can just Ctrl+V paste it right into your Message body (as long as you haven't put something else in the clipboard since snipping it), as I do here:
And you can draw in it to circle or highlight things, etc., before pasting [see my red & green circling in Message 8].
[And just for fun, in the case of squaring² something specifically, since that was mentioned in Message 1: In Mtext and MultiLeaders and Dimension text overrides (but not in plain Text) you can get that without typing a 2 and then selecting it and then picking the superscript option in the Formatting tab of the ribbon. Hold down the ALT key, and on the numeric keypad (not the number keys along the top), press 253 and then release ALT. That's the ALT code for a superscript 2. >Here< is a site that lists the other available ALT-code symbols you can use. I use ALT+248 for degrees ° a lot here, and ALT+241 for plus-or-minus ±, etc.]
