On the business cards made for me, why is the type made up of individual paths in my Adobe Illustrator file?

I had a professional design me some business cards last year, and she sent the file to a printer to have them professionally digitally printed. After she had completed several design projects for me, the designer gave me a disc with everything she designed. Since then, I purchased Adobe CS2 and, while I'm most comfortable with Photoshop, I know some very rudimentary stuff in Illustrator from experimenting. Now it's time for me to order business cards again, and I want to make a few changes, like enlarge some type. (I did that with minimal problem.) The tricky thing is adding new text, because each character in a line of text is it's own "compound path" in a "group." My question is twofold:


1. Is it necessary to treat each character as art? Is it just a style thing that gives the designer complete control over the appearance? Can I just use the type tool and do the same thing or will it change when printed?


2. If it's necessary, HOW do I turn something I've typed into a "compound path?

On the business cards made for me, why is the type made up of individual paths in my Adobe Illustrator file?
ANSWER TO QUESTION1:


I'm assuming your text had been converted to outlines, at least that's what it sounds like. If it has been converted to outlines, meaning you cannot continue to type or make changes, you will need to retype everything if you are making changes in text size or adding/removing copy. Your Designer probably did it to make it easier for the Printer, not having to deal with installing fonts and possibly running into problems when Preflighting.





ANSWER TO QUESTION 2:


If you want to convert text into outlines do the following:


- select the text box


- go to Type %26gt; Create Outlines