Text Gradient Question

I generated my own gradient and applied it to some text, but the gradient is repeating every character. I would like it to cycle once across the whole word.
How can I achieve this?
The user manual talks about an on-screen gradient control, but I can't get that to come up. I Control-Click the text, no option for Edit Gradient which the manual says should be there. It also says you can chose the Adjust tool, but that is not available when I select the text. Any ideas?

I had a quick look and can't see anything, so hopefully someone will have a more elegant solution than this one.

If you create a gradient generator, apply an image mask and use your text as the mask you can get the gradient to apply across the word.

Thanks NocoDave for taking a look. If there really isn't a way to apply the gradient over the word, I'll use the mask suggestion below.

Highlight the Text layer in the Layers pane, go to the Inspector, Text tab, Style section. In the Face section, change "Fill with" to Gradient. Open the Gradient section and go to town.

You can also use the Keyframe control next to the Color variable to change the gradient colors for each over time.

If you apply a preset gradient, be sure the text is highlighted as a whole, not with the text edit cursor, so you don't apply it to only one letter.

This is where the problem lies Ben, if you do that and change the gradient angle to 180 degrees you can see that it sets the gradient per character. There is no option (or at least neither me or ElanMike can find it) to map the gradient as per line or per word.

Also, when working with a text gradient the "Adjust Item" tool isn't available to get to the gradients OSC.

Wow, I didn't see that before. Using a mask gives you more control. But for basic gradients it's easier.

Adjust Item tool is only available to masks and such, correct.

I also find you can't apply a text layer as the source for an image mask, too.

I can add the text to an image mask, but not as a standard mask. If I right click, "add image mask" and put the text in there it works fine.

I also tried changing the text's "Font", "Face", "Fill with" to "Texture" and dragged the gradient in there, it also does per character, which can be quite nice with images/video's, but maybe not so much with gradients.

It won't accept a text layer as a source for an Image Mask for me no matter what, following what you said.

I just made a simple test project where it works, maybe you could open it and see if you still have the problem with a project made on a different machine.

Could you make your text in Photoshop with your desired gradient and import it into Motion?

Ah, I got it. Went back to the original project I had tested in, it was a project I was building for a tutorial. I had done some things that prohibited the text layer from being used for much of anything. But yes, a basic text layer can be used as an Image Mask source. Very cool.

You "could" do it in Photoshop, but then you're stuck with what you did in Photoshop. Doing it inside Motion, you can animate the gradient, adjust the text, etc, etc, etc. Way too easy to do inside Motion to go out to another app, IMHO. But yes, you physically can do that and import your PSD file into Motion.