Last Chance

Just faffing about with the latest Beta test (1.8.0.535), but I noted that with 'Preview' mode on, I'm unable to scroll past the first full spread (pp 2 & 3; about two-thirds down this spread) of a 104pp document. Switching Preview off allows scrolling of the document as normal, but switching it back on and any action makes it jumps back to the first spread.

You can also export the document as a PDF and import this, complete with endnotes (footnotes are a problem though). However, this is a problematic process as no paragraph or character styles are imported and there is a line break for every line. While I think the line breaks could be stripped out, the loss of all the styles is a major headache.

I think we'll have to "agree to disagree" here Pyanepsion My experience with importing Word DOCX files into InDesign has, on the whole, been very good with little, or no alterations necessary. Importing raw text files of even RTF just creates a lot of work, IMHO. As I said before, Affinity Publisher's handling of Word DOCX files is "OK" as at least all the paragraph and style definitions are included - it's just that the fonts, sizes etc. can (but not always) be altered, which is a simple matter of correcting the definitions. Generally, this is much better for me when dealing with entire books. My current book is about 300,000 words and this will probably end up nearer 400,000 when completed. I'm not sure how large, or small, your client's documents are, but for a book this size having some of the work done is better than none at all

Guys, the only reason it's "not a good idea" to import a DOCX is because Affinity Publisher does not quite handle it properly - yet. It's not bad, but some of the Styles do get screwed for some reason and apparently the developers are working on it. I learnt this after I sent an email to Serif, to which they replied promptly. But it still imports all the definitions and so can be edited and applied, so a lot easier than using RTF, which would lose all the definitions completely. As a budget piece of software, though, I am amazed at what Affinity Publisher CAN do! Sure, it will never aspire to be as good as InDesign, which I currently use, but as a replacement it's very hard (impossible?) to beat on price and for this reason, I think I will drop that money pit (InDesign ~£240 per annum) and swap over. By the time my next book is ready to publish, I'm hoping the footnotes & endnotes will be sorted as that is the only major feature I miss so far.

Thanks for the invite, Patrick. I would like to know the progress Serif is making towards adding this feature as it is just one of two points that are preventing me from purchasing the software. The other is a proper import of Word DOCX documents. After imported one of the DOCX chapters to my book it managed to scramble some of the Paragraph and Text Styles, which would necessitate editing all the text and paragraph definitions. For example, somehow it decided to use the Times New Roman font, when my default is Zapf Humanist. Also, I can't work out why all my text frames have a grey background! Curious ... One feature I am pleased to see is the Indexing - another crucial feature for me. Please keep us informed.

I can only add my name to the list of contributors requiring footnotes or endnotes - the latter being more important in my case. The book I am currently writing has in some cases, over 1,000 endnotes in a single chapter: imagine having to transpose these over. Sure, these will be reduced as some are being used to keep track of some incredibly intricate research, but I cannot hope to use Publisher (currently trying the trial version) unless this issue is addressed. I do think Affinity Publisher is a brilliant program and has many excellent features but without footnotes and endnotes, it's not a runner.