HOW I STOPPED AFFINITY PUBLISHER FROM CRASHING
Bottom Line Up Front - there was some conflict in the file that I was editing that caused AP to crash about 10 seconds after opening it. I created a new document and created new master pages and the crashing stopped (for now).
Explanation and background - I had created some master pages, text styles and had written a lot of content. After several months away from the project, I returned and did some editing and work: some format changes; new text styles; some copy editing. I then saved everything and shut down my computer. The following day I opened up the file, let's call it TEXTBOOK CHAPTER 1, and it began crashing. This had happened before and a search on the internet revealed that it was not an uncommon problem.
My Solution that has worked (so far) - Because I had copied TEXTBOOK CHAPTER 1 and then edited it as another chapter, let's call the second file TEXTBOOK CHAPTER 2, I now had two files that originated from the same source. When I found that TEXTBOOK CHAPTER 1 and TEXTBOOK CHAPTER 2 were both crashing, the only thing I could assume was that there was some bug in the original TEXTBOOK CHAPTER 1 file, which remained with the copied file that became TEXTBOOK CHAPTER 2. So both files were corrupt!
SOLUTION: Here's what I did:
1. I turned of the hardware accelerator which was a suggestion someone else posted. (Go to Edit>Settings>Performance, then untick/uncheck the "*Hardware Acceleration: Enable OpenCL compute acceleration" check box and then restart the computer)
2. I created a new document and created new master pages.
3. I have been working now for over an hour and not a single crash... HOWEVER! I want to cut and paste the content from the corrupt files into the new master pages so I'm going to export them to a Word Document and then import them into the new files. Sort of like laundering the files through Word. (WORD!)
This solution may not work for everybody, and I might find that the crashing may recommence... but the last hour has been crash free, but the hour prior to my solution being created, I had over 20 crashes!
Good Luck, guys!