Jerry Jenkins

Lagarto, Psenda, Walt, and all: I set up Publisher on a newer machine here, iMac Retina, Mohave 10.14.3, i7 processor, 32 GB memory, and asked it to link to several hundred Illustrator drawings of tree buds. These are fairly complex drawings, 5-10 MB each, lots of shapes and gradients. Publisher handled them without and hesitation or fuss, and saved and reopened the file without incident, in a matter of a few seconds. So, unless I run into problems in even larger files, everything is working. My conclusion is that while Publisher runs under Mac OS 10.10, it cannot link to large numbers of vector files, either in Designer or Illustrator format, without generating errors and crashing. I love working in Publisher, and am pleased with this outcome. And grateful for your help. I will continue to work in it -- book of about 500 pages, maybe 2,000 illustrations and maps -- and am sure I will have other questions as I go along. Jerry Jenkins norternforestatlas.org

Lagarto, thank you. You encountered exactly the same error messages that I did; it is useful to know they are reproducible and not local to my system. also, as you, I encountered no problems running Indesign on files with over 2,000 links, so did not think it could be purely an operating system issue. <y problems with Publisher were on an older Mac OS -- 10.10 -- Have just installed Publisher on a Mac running Mohave 10.14.3, and tomorrow will run the same files and test. Hope it works! Will post results. J.

Again, all very useful. I think regarding it as an interaction between Publisher and the Max OS may be the key. I have have several machines here and have been work on the one with the older 10.10 operating system to use legacy software that I need for photomicroscopy and scientific work, and to stay out of the cloud as much as possible. My next step will be to upgrade one of the newer machines, or possibly purchase another, and run the Affinity suite on that. From what you all say, that may be the best solution all around. It will take me about a week to switch over and test. I will report back to on this thread once I have. Psenda, I am sorry that the carriage returns display poorly for you, and won't use them. They look fine on my screen and some naturally to me because I write in short paragraphs. Many things to learn. Thank you all for the help. J.

All, Two more experiments. I made a test file, without text, and placed about 200 linked TIFFS in it. Publisher behaved sweetly, fast, no problems. Saved quickly, reloaded quickly. I converted 160 Illustrator files to Affinity Designer files, made another test file, placed them as linked files. Everything worked fine until I hit about 140 files, at which point Publisher freezes when I try to save. So the problem is specific to vector files and occurs at around 150 files per document. And would seem to be a limitation of the either my hardware (Mac Retina, 4HZ i7 16 GB ram) or of Publisher. It may be the deal breaker for me. Should I report this as a possible bug? Once again, many thanks for your help. J.

Hello all, In answer to Walt, two type faces, each used in regular, italic, bold, small caps. So likely 8 font files. Just finished and two experiments. First made a test file and embedded about 150 AI files in it. It saved and open fine, but of course the file size got big fast. The Publisher help file says that there is a file size beyond which it won't allow embedding, but doesn't say what that is. I am starting a 500-page book with 10-15 vector drawings per page, so embedding all the drawings is not an option, unless I break it into smaller files. Second experiment, I added linked AI files in batches of thirty to a test file. Up to about 130 files everything was fast and fine.The next batch of 30 generated error messages and crashed the save. Tomorrow I will experiment with adding embedded and link tiff files to see if the problem is files in general or specific to Illustrator files. I will post the results. With thanks for your help. I am really hoping I solve this because I love working on Publisher. But my work demands that I link to thousands of files, and it may be that the current build of Publisher is not ready for that. J.

Thank you all, and this is proving interesting. To clarify. Publisher was bought from Affinity, not the Mac store. The problem is with AI files placed as linked files on Publisher pages. The error message "Failed to open file ... too many open files in system" comes from Publisher, but it may still reflect an operating system problem. It is not, however, a general problem; in Indesign I routinely work on documents with 1,500 to 2,000 linked files, without problems. But it may be, and I am just speculating here, that Publisher keeps all the placed files open, and Ind doesn't. It is, however, a dangerous problem: once it has occurred, when you try to save you get the message "Failed to save because access to the file was lost," so the file is no longer usable. Were this to happen several months into a big project, it would be very bad. I am currently trying to workarounds: recreating the test file with all the placed files embedded; and converting the placed files to Designer files, incase the problem has to do with the way Publisher handles illustrator files. I will take your comments into account as I do this, and report what I find. With thanks, J.

Psenda, Thank you, and I did look at those. One seems similar, but dealt with PSD files. I was wondering in what situations others have encountered this, and if anything was known about wht the limits to open files were. J.

Hi, Using Publisher on a Mc, OS 10,10.5. Working on a book chapter with many small linked Illustrator files. When I got to about 150 linked files I started getting error messages in a a pop-up box that says "Failed to open file" and gives me the name of one of the linked files, and then "The file could not be opened because there are too many open files in the system." After I click through a hundred or so of these boxes, I can get access to the file, and I see that many of the linked files are marked "missing" In resource manager. The files are where they have always been; Publisher is not linking to them. If I attempt to work on the file, I get the whole string of a hundred popups again. I work routinely on illustrated books with 1,000 or more links, so need a work-round for this. Questions for the Forum: Has anyone else seen this? Is this a bug, or is there a known limit to the number of linked files you can have? Any suggestions? Can I get around this by embedding them? As a trial I am recreating the file with all embedded images. I will report on what happens. Thank you, J.

Dan, Thank you very much. I am switching, with pleasure, to Publisher, after 20 years of book design on INF and others.These forums are, for me, the key to the change over. J.

Hi, I import small AI or PDF files in groups of 10 or more to place on pages as linked files. They come in with the page box set to "trim box" which gives me a small object on a large page. I then set them to "maximum content" one at a time, which is inefficient. Is there a way to either set the default page box for import to "maximum content" or to change the page box setting for a group of files all at once? Thanks, J. Jerry Jenkins -- Northern Forest Atlas

Hi, I have early versions of Designer (1.5.1) and Photo (1.4.3) that i would like to update and link to Publisher. They don't have a "check for updates" option in the application menus. What should I do? Thank you, Jerry J.