Jon Coffin

Hi Guys, Well, I still haven't figured it out, but I did manage to get screen shots. I didn't change any texts settings or attributes. But, it seems like every time I open the file it says: A recovery file exists for One Flew Over the Baitshed in color.afpub. Do you want to open the recovery version? I click no. Then, another window: Some of your linked resource files are missing. Would you like to open them? Everything was fine at first, I exported to Adobe and printed away. Then I decided to add color by replacing pictures, not touching any text, and somehow my one page of text changed. I have no clue...

The page in question text is like a middle grey when it was black before. When I try to highlight it like to copy and paste or cut, I only get a box frame around the page with blue dots, you can't edit the text or do anything with it. Preceding and subsequent pages are normal for text editing. It's like the text body is an image now. I've been careful to not experiment or fiddle with my file because I've been over my head the whole time, and it's been a while since I created it, so I've forgotten a lot I learned. I need to print some so I'm kind'a desperate and lost...

I opened my file ( a book I wrote ) to add an image and one of my pages had changed. The color of the font went from black to grey and I can't figure out what is wrong or how to fix it. Any ideas?

Hi Bruce! Yay, it worked, I get it now. I have 2 nice Brother laser printers, a 2 sided B & W workhorse that cranks out ... and a 2 sided color Brother laser for covers. I haven't printed yet but I'm sure it's all good. I absolutely love their printers, never jammed once, thousands of pages of nice 28# paper and 110# card stock, with all kinds of brain power inside. The color one has a long hinged scan cover that lets me scan paintings like the fish house on the cover on here somewhere and the castle pic. I can produce 40 or so books a day and bind them with a Fellowes comb binder, they lay flat for easy reading, pretty slick when it all goes right. Just like you, I like to help people out. I'm an electrician and have fixed up a lot of people with small favors, get 'em on track... I've asked a lot of questions out of frustration on here but have done some homework and I'm getting there. I'm amazed at the number of tutorials out there, and amazed at the depth of Affinity. I feel like a kid in a candy store. A long time ago I worked at a place that made stenciled stuff and ran 2 Roland plotters with a program called Signmate that cut the mylar. I had to crank to keep up with 40 stencilers and 50 or so designs. You had to zoom way in to look at nodes that might be tangled and cause the stencils to tear when they cleaned 'em, or open up a little for dried paint, change layers around, add and subtract, personalize... loved it but got burnt out after a few years. Went back to wiring... Then had an idea for books. Here I am, virally hunkered down. What do you do for excitement?? Well, thanks again!

How do you send a screen shot?

Well, in Open Office my pages were laid out vertically, single file, and I was able to select 2 sided on my laser printer and it worked great. However, Aff Pub wouldn't offer 2 sided in it's print window (have seen it in beta in a video) and I tried printing, say, 1-6 with 2 sided selected in my printer's print window, and they came out 6 sheets one sided. In my pages vane under Masters vane on the left, Page 1 is singularly on the right and pages 2 and 3 are side by side thence and so on. Is it because I need to have 1 and 2 side by side? If so, is there an easy fix or will I get the joy of fixing everything all colorful expletive over again? I'm a good aim when it comes to shooting myself in the foot {:^). All I see under print is single, flip long, and flip short.... not a clue what it means. Can anybody shed any light?

Thanks Bruce!! That was it, fixed it and worked great (text frame too small for page #). Figured out a lot of other stuff and got it all done, yay! But... Let me first say I print my own books with comb bindings: cheap, easy, pretty durable, and what I like most is they lay flat for easy reading, sell 'em in gift shops. Well, in Open Office my pages were laid out vertically, single file, and I was able to select 2 sided on my Brother laser printer (have 2 and love 'em) and it worked great. However, Aff Pub wouldn't offer 2 sided in it's print window and I tried printing 1-6 with 2 sided selected in my printer's print window, and they came out one sided. In my pages vane under Masters vane on the left, Page 1 is singularly on the right and pages 2 and 3 are side by side thence and so on. Is it because I need to have 1 and 2 side by side? If so, is there an easy fix or will I get the joy of fixing everything all colorful expletive over again? I'm almost there............. I hope!

Oh, and what does the red onion mean when it replaces a page number halfway down one side of facing pages?

Hello, So... Moving right along, don't I wish.... I got all my text into nice pages with the font I want, all connected and stuff, and it all flowed out nice. But, there's always a but, it seems my character spacing and baselines are a little too tight the way they pasted in, kind'a hard to read and busy. I tried selecting one page of text at a time and applied the attributes I wanted in the character pallet, but they didn't flow out and I think some text was deleted or overwritten. I panicked, hit undo... Then, I drew a text box around all pages, selected "select all" and applied them again, and nothing seemed to happen. Somehow I missed the boat... This was for 60 or so pages and I had 120 available, with all pics removed, and around 52,000 words. I had this "save as" 'ed as an experiment, so no loss. Would love to get 'em all in one fell swoop so I can move on to the fun stuff. I'm all but done with this book and I want to move on with a book about a hermit on the side of a mountain here in Maine, and I can't wait to learn Affinity and use it for that, I never knew what I was missing running those clunker programs. So, I was wondering again, any ideas out there?

Hi everybody, Here's an Affinity update... I was able to get all my text into my book project, 100 or so pages, by copy and paste, with the right font but text spaceings are much too cramped, (I figured out how to change that but would like to do it to all the text once globally (?), and there are instances where text doesn't flow very well, almost like each "paste" entry is it's own entity or object. I was able to link my pages together, but trying to backspace and return to fill spaces and then to place pix gives me problems, like gaps and jumping to the next page, hard to describe. Some other programs have "combine " features or "group"-ing items so they can be edited as one. Is there some command that will smooth up or mate up the text flow? Any command to select all text as one and edit as one? The program seemed to bog as I went along like it was getting low on memory, (I have 16gig of ram) and a very fast CPU. I was worried about closing and rebooting to refresh and have stuff not reassimillate or whatever. I wish I'd started out with this program in the beginning. The ability to switch over to Photo and edit photos is a dream come true, and my pix never looked better. Any one got any ideas?

Well... I have decided on a new approach to my Open Office struggle. I was able to save all my text as a, you guessed it, .txt text file, and I am going to start all over as I have some time on my hands. I have a lot of illustrations I don't mind working on again in Designer and Photo as I want to learn them, (I'm pretty good at Corel Draw and Photoshop), and Affinity stuff looks familiar, so I will add pix back as I go. My book is 110 pages, letter size 8.5 x 11, and 52,000 or so words. But I am at a loss at how to place a big text file across that many pages. I can't find a video tutorial on it, and I haven't managed to get any text past the first page... Can't find anything specific in Help either. I have a comb binder so I don't want my pages side by side, I want them lined singularly vertically, number them consecutively, and print duplex. Anybody ever done that before? This forum is great, and I am so appreciative of the help from you guys! Jon

About the export to PDF, it just turns to machine language and gibberish, so weird. Photoshop has quirks like that, too, sometimes. I'm wondering what did you mean Wosven? I didn't or wouldn't do that intentionally, don't think it's that... How do you get tech support from Affinity? They must have seen this before. Jon

Hi, Thanks for all the help! (Back from lunch) The problem is as soon as I hit Print to open the dialog box to choose a print method like "to PDF", it repaginates my file. I can tell without looking closely because the page count increases. It will leave gaps, omit pix, push pix into the margins, and just wreak havoc. Then it takes a long time for me to go back through and straighten it all out, after a couple of times of that, I figured there's got to be a better way. I stumbled on a good deal on Affinity and here I am. I guess it just amounts to you get what you don't pay for with Open Office. Libre does the same thing. Rich text format won't open in Affinity, either. Libre's "save as" file extensions don't look like they'd work, maybe, I don't know... I am not good at this and am about ready to give up. I did the attachment book's cover in Photoshop... it's a fun book about an island in Maine where I live. Have to go to Home Depot... I'll be back!

Hi Walt, Thanks for helping, but my "save as" drop down doesn't list a docx. I read what you wrote on a 'net thread and it says you're right, but I don't have it. I have my book in Open Office 4.1.7 ?? I am so frustrated. Thanks

Hi, I wrote some short books in Open Office with illustrations and don't remember having too many problems, other than pictures moving around a little in one of them. So... I had this great idea of a much longer one, with a lot more illustrations, and I worked and worked on it for months. I did struggle a bit to get pix to stay put where I wanted them sometimes, but finally finished it and was happy 'til I went to print it on my big new laser printer... When I hit Print it repaginates and rearranges things all over the place and the result is all mixed up. I bought the Affinity suite but it doesn't support that format. Does anybody have any suggestions?? I am almost bald from tearing my hair out over this... Thanks