GaryLearnTech

Hi All,
Well, it’s been a pretty crazy week since the launch of V2!
This has been a real labour of love for us over the last year or so, and I can’t even begin to describe how hard the development team have worked on it. Not only getting the V2 apps launched, but also of course finally bringing Publisher to iPad. 
With this being our first paid-for upgrade there has understandably been a lot of feedback / questions around future updates and our pricing policies. I thought it was worth addressing / clarifying our position on some of these personally...
Updates to V2 moving forward
Buying V2 not only gets you all the new features you have seen, but we have various updates planned – including many more new features and improvements – which you will get for free. This will continue until such a time that V3 is released. We’re not sure exactly when V3 will be, but I can confirm we are not going to move to anything as regular as an annual upgrade cycle as has been speculated.
It’s worth saying too that V2 does include many under-the-hood changes to our underlying technology, and we have also been investing in several new areas of research recently. Some of these haven’t manifested themselves into new features yet, but overall V2 does give us a better platform to develop on moving forward and I’m sure you will be pleased with the updates V2 will receive.
Updates to V1 moving forward
While we did say on the FAQ that V1 would no longer receive any updates, I want to clarify that was about new feature updates. We will be updating V1 to fix any critical problems caused by operating system updates in the future. So if the next version of macOS breaks V1 we will endeavour to fix it. There will be a point in time when continuing to maintain V1 in this way will not be tenable, but certainly for the foreseeable future we will continue to patch. In fact, we have an update to V1 queued up for release very shortly with some fixes for Ventura and issues caused by a recent Windows security / quality update. 
We will update our FAQ shortly to make that clearer for everyone.
Offer period
In case you didn’t see, I’m pleased to confirm we have decided to run this initial launch offer until 14th December to give everyone the best chance possible to get it if they wish / have a decent amount of time to trial it. 
Upgrade pricing
It’s been really hard to see some of the comments about us not looking after our existing customers – we’re pretty devasted that anyone feels like that to be honest. But the fact is we felt our hands were tied somewhat with being able to offer upgrade pricing in a fair way. The main reason for this was App Store customers (which make up around 35% of our userbase). The problems with that are two-fold: firstly, we didn’t have a way from within V1 to validate an App Store purchase receipt to reliably ensure customers who were entitled to an upgrade could get one; and secondly, we could not find a good way for people to get that discount via the App Store. Us pushing upgrade customers to go exclusively via our own site (including customers who were previously acquired via the app stores) may also have put us in violation of App Store Ts & Cs which we were obviously concerned about.
I’m not saying that these issues were completely insurmountable, but any solutions we came up with would be messy, and most importantly could have resulted in some bona fide V1 customers struggling to get validated and claim their discount. We certainly don’t have the support resource here if we ended up needing to manually validate tens of thousands of receipts for example.
The only option we felt was safe to move forward with was a general launch offer, which would guarantee that every V1 customer could get the discount, whether they purchased directly through us or the App Stores. We knew a side effect of that would mean some new customers would end up receiving that same discount – but we felt that was a better option than V1 customers missing out. It’s also worth saying that while there has been some good press about V2, all our main marketing has been via email and through social media to our followers. In other words, we felt ok about it because we knew the vast majority of people who would find out about it or take advantage of the offer would be existing customers. I would be surprised if over the offer period customers upgrading from V1 didn’t make up more than 90% of our sales.
Overall I do believe us giving a 40% discount, along with the addition of the new Universal Licence of course, is offering fantastic value for money for those who want to upgrade. 
However, taking on board some of the feedback there is something extra we can do – we will offer a new free bundle of content exclusively for V1 customers upgrading to V2 as an extra thank you for your support. I’ve seen this suggested by a number of customers and it’s a great idea as it does remove the App Store conflict entirely. 
We’ll need a little time to put something together, but all customers who previously registered or purchased V1 and have since upgraded to V2 will receive a voucher code for this via email as soon as we can.
A comment on no subscription
I do want to say that some of the points above are exactly the reason why software companies move to subscription. Whatever you do with upgrade pricing, you still have the issue of customers who bought the previous version 3 months ago vs. those who have had it 2+ years. Offering perpetual licences also gives the additional overhead of needing to maintain the previous version longer than you would if everyone was on subscription / generally always on the latest version.
We are a small team so some of these complications are not ideal — all we really want to do is focus on developing our latest codebase, push out regular updates and continue with our mission to make great creative software accessible to everyone. 
But it does need to be funded somehow. We know you love our no-subscription model, but there also needs to be a level of appreciation that the alternative is having paid-for upgrades from time to time. That unfortunately comes with its own problems.
All of that said, I have to say we have been blown away with the response to V2 - around 3 times as many people have upgraded in the last week than we expected - and we really can't thank you enough for the support you have shown. More than anything the success of this upgrade puts us in a great place to continue investing heavily in development which is ultimately what it's all about, and we’re super excited to crack on with some great updates coming next year!
All the best,
Ash

What you describe @GaryLearnTechis the correct behaviour. The pasteboard area is not a "droppable" zone for the current document, so they will open in a new document. 

I think this might be the first report of the issue so you get the star! 🙂 

You need to be in Photo's Develop persona.  Then, if it's hidden, go to Window > Location to enable the panel.  Initially, it's likely to be at the top of the Right Studio, in the same group as the Histogram panel.

You need to be in Photo's Develop persona.  Then, if it's hidden, go to Window > Location to enable the panel.  Initially, it's likely to be at the top of the Right Studio, in the same group as the Histogram panel.

If you do end up buying a StreamDeck, don't rush to spend more money on packs like these without trying to roll your own shortcuts first.  At least try some small sets of your own first.
I've just taken a look at the latest installer from their downloads page and I don't see any indication of Big Sur being supported yet, never mind native Apple Silicon support.  (Having said that, they don't warn us not to install it.)  I have one that was installed on my old machine but I never bothered installing it on my M1 mini yet.  I may give it a shot this week, or I may wait…
Ah - here we are: M1 device compatible using Rosetta 2 (for now).  Maybe the next update will bring full compatibility.

Hi @All Media Lab - you're missing something subtle in @v_kyr's posts.  There are (at least) three different Library folders in different locations on any machine running macOS.
1.  /System/Library
The central one is located in the System folder and is pretty much exclusively reserved for use by the operating system, so I'll say nothing more about it here.  If you're curious, look but don't touch!  
2.  /Library
This central one is commonly used by apps to store global preferences, support files and various other resources.  This is available to all users with a login on your computer and provides a central location for commonly accessed settings - one copy that can be read (and sometimes written to) by any user.
The / character at the beginning of each of those paths indicates that you start at the top level of "Macintosh HD" and click down from there.  That's commonly referred to as the root of your file system.
3.  However, over and above those two central Library folders, every user with a login on any Mac has their own user Library folder too, located in the Users folder.  That allows each user to have their own individual preferences for how an app is configured, their own individual set of installed fonts and so on.  Written out longhand, an individual user's library folder path might look like this
/Users/gary/Library
You can read that as saying from double-clicking on your Macintosh HD icon (ie, the root of your drive), then double-click the Users folder, then double-click the gary folder and then locate the Library folder within that.
Because this is a standard structure, the /Users/yourname part is commonly replaced with the tilde character and your home directory would simply be written as ~/.  Taking that one step further, we get the path to anyone's 'personal' Library folder as:
~/Library
- - - -
So - there are two similar but very different Library paths available: 
/Library/  ~/Library/ Many of the same sub-folders can be found in both Libraries, so that can be confusing if you take a wrong turning.  For example, you're likely to have each of the following folders in both locations: Application Support, Caches, Fonts, Screen Savers - and many others.
Now, armed with this distinction, if you look back at v_kyr's posts, you'll see the ~ prefixxing each path, so it's the personal Library that's indicated there.  However, your screenshot shows the path at the bottom of the window as the central /Library folder - the one located at the root of your Macintosh HD.  And that's why you couldn't find what you were after - you were in the wrong Library folder…

Hope this helps?

Hello @hector.as92 - welcome to the forums!
Ajusting the Phase value in the Stroke panel should allow you to balance the dashes.
(¡Bienvenido a los foros!  Ajustar el valor de Fase en el panel Trazo debería permitirle equilibrar los guiones.)

Hi @BlueSailing I've had a tinker with this and I think I can put my finger on two problems that are bothering you.  First of all, I can bring both pages in (right click on a page in the Pages panel and select Add Pages from File…  That seems to work fine.
It's only when I try to change the text flow between the frames that things really get messed up.  But that was easy to bring back under control.  Using the text tool, click inside what was the first paragraph of one of the pages.  Then in in the Flow section of the Paragraph panel, set the menu beside Start: to On Next Page (as shown below).  That's a manual override that will put that paragraph  at the top of the next page and restore the layout you had in the single page files.  Don't use a series of carriage returns (the enter key) to do this.

 
The other thing I spotted that I would do differently is how you're configuring the Float settings for each pinned image.  Looking at your earlier pages, you seem to be left and right aligning the photos on or close to the text frame margins (a mall offset on the right for the drop shadow?).  But you're floating/anchoring the images to the character to which they're pinned.  I would align to the columns, as shown below right.  This way, you can edit the text later on if required and not worry about your pinned images moving.  The screenshots below are from the Harry King image.  If you don't want the images flush on the margin, you could offset it slightly.  For the image of the Anita, you'd select Inside Right of Column.  Note that when you change the pinning rule, Publisher maintains the old position (ie it updates the Offset value), so you'd manually have to set the offset to zero (or whatever offset).

Hopefully that will help you make some progress?
(NB I haven't seen "this topic from a week ago", so I don't know if anything I've said here repeats any of that post - or even contradicts any of it.)

Hi @BlueSailing I've had a tinker with this and I think I can put my finger on two problems that are bothering you.  First of all, I can bring both pages in (right click on a page in the Pages panel and select Add Pages from File…  That seems to work fine.
It's only when I try to change the text flow between the frames that things really get messed up.  But that was easy to bring back under control.  Using the text tool, click inside what was the first paragraph of one of the pages.  Then in in the Flow section of the Paragraph panel, set the menu beside Start: to On Next Page (as shown below).  That's a manual override that will put that paragraph  at the top of the next page and restore the layout you had in the single page files.  Don't use a series of carriage returns (the enter key) to do this.

 
The other thing I spotted that I would do differently is how you're configuring the Float settings for each pinned image.  Looking at your earlier pages, you seem to be left and right aligning the photos on or close to the text frame margins (a mall offset on the right for the drop shadow?).  But you're floating/anchoring the images to the character to which they're pinned.  I would align to the columns, as shown below right.  This way, you can edit the text later on if required and not worry about your pinned images moving.  The screenshots below are from the Harry King image.  If you don't want the images flush on the margin, you could offset it slightly.  For the image of the Anita, you'd select Inside Right of Column.  Note that when you change the pinning rule, Publisher maintains the old position (ie it updates the Offset value), so you'd manually have to set the offset to zero (or whatever offset).

Hopefully that will help you make some progress?
(NB I haven't seen "this topic from a week ago", so I don't know if anything I've said here repeats any of that post - or even contradicts any of it.)

Are you using a really old version of Word?  How are you trying to 'open' your PDFs?  I've opened (File > Open) PDF's from various sources straight into Word on a number of occasions over the years.  Right-clicking a PDF on my desktop and selecting Open With > Microsoft Word also works.
I'm using Word 365.  At work, I've had Windows-using colleagues open complex PDF's straight into Word 2019 and possibly some older ones using Word 2016 in times gone by.  The results have been a little mixed but have usually sufficed.
In a couple of quick test documents produced just now out of Publisher, I selected the "PDF (digital - high quality)" export preset.  I wonder if some of the other presets my not work so well (or better!)?

There is no special place in these Forums in which to say how heartbroken we are here in my part of America at the passing of your dear and wonderful Queen.  Your sorrow is ours, your mourning is ours, and your prayers for her eternal rest are ours.  There was never before, nor will there ever be again, anybody like her.  The world is very empty today.

Perhaps @CrashX was referring to the New Document preset, simply called "Business Card"?  It appears near the end of both the Print and the Press Ready groups so, depending on how large you've set the New Documents window, you may have to scroll a bit to see it.

@GaryLearnTech Using troubleshoot did not fix the issue, but I did find the problem.
So, normally when I would copy&paste, I just right-click and use "Copy image" in context menu. Images copied this method go way off the page someplace and have to be tracked down by panning or use align/transform options to center onto the page. I suspected it was taking some HTML bits that were being copied into Publisher and influencing positioning.

The fix: So outside of saving the image and importing in through menus like a normal image, I figured out if I right-clicked outside the image for example on a DIV/text container, I could use "Take Screenshot" in context menu which I had done in the past which caused mixed results. I can hover over the image and copy that method using the Screenshot option which treats it more like an image slice. It saves it as a straight image and I'm able to copy&paste straight into the page centered just fine.

TLDR: If you are a Firefox user, try "Take Screenshot" option instead of copy image so that you are surely getting only image data.

I looked into a clipboard viewer to verify that this was happening. Here is what I discovered:

 
"Copy image" option in right-click context menu (Clipboard Data)




"Take Screenshot" option in right-click context menu (Clipboard Data)

That's actually a good idea. I'll give it a try. Thanks!

Hi @debraspicher   I wonder - could this be caused by a side effect of a browser extension or plugin?  If/when you encounter this again, perhaps you could try to "Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode": https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/diagnose-firefox-issues-using-troubleshoot-mode  
If that does appear to resolve the problem, you'd need to return to Firefox's normal mode (just restart Firefox) and try working through the active extensions, disabling a few at a time, to try to identify the specific culprit(s).

I'd recommend extending your Affinity toolkit with VectorStyler which is perfect for all manor of blends, warps, vector pattern fills, Vector brushes etc... just stuff that Designer doesn't have that Illustrator has, some even via Astute illustrator plugins. Theres a bit of a learning curve but it compliments Affinity brilliantly and enables you to blast through stuff you just can't do with Designers limited vector toolset - see vid:   
Screen Grab 2022-08-06 at 12.03.24 pm.mov

Hello @ginaswindow
Start the app as administrator. Hold Shift + CTRL and start the app.

Hi @LeahKiser - sorry, I see that jump in your earlier screenshot now.
I don't think it's so likely that you being on a Windows machine while I'm on a Mac is likely to be significant.
What version of Publisher are you using?  The difference in our experiences makes me wonder if you're on an older version?
What Data Merge settings are you using?
There are some slight anomalies in your data file.  There are six fields for each record, but you've only got five column headers.  Only two rows, as far as I can see, use the sixth field: Aug-12 (Ketubot 37) and Sep-23 (Ketubot 79).  Adding a suitable column title and the associated data merge field may sort things out on your end.

I believe I have cracked it, @LeahKiser.  Specify your data merge as follows, in particular, the Merge Pages section at the lower right.  On my Mac, the Data Merge dialog box isn't initially displayed at full height, so it might not be obvious that there's additional functionality tucked away that's critical in this instance.  Hover over the lower boundary and drag down a little to reveal the options shown below.  Specifying the page range consistently generates the results I think you're after, for both examples.

 
One other thing - do yourself a favour and stop labelling your data (at least the data from your current sources) as CSV.  It's not comma separated - it's tab separated.  Same idea, but different implementation.  I've always just called such data sources "tab delimited", but Serif describes them on the man pages as ".tsv" files, which I suppose is fair enough.  Rename your data source file accordingly and the import process will go more smoothly.  You won't have to manually change the Delimiter field at the top right of the Data Merge screen - it automatically defaults to "tab" if your naming convention is foo.tsv.

Hmmm.  Bet I'm not the only one that instantly thought of this skit!  😁  (With apologies to the original poster for continuing down this unrelated rabbit hole!)
 

Hmmm.  Bet I'm not the only one that instantly thought of this skit!  😁  (With apologies to the original poster for continuing down this unrelated rabbit hole!)
 

Hmmm.  Bet I'm not the only one that instantly thought of this skit!  😁  (With apologies to the original poster for continuing down this unrelated rabbit hole!)
 

Hmmm.  Bet I'm not the only one that instantly thought of this skit!  😁  (With apologies to the original poster for continuing down this unrelated rabbit hole!)
 

Hmmm.  Bet I'm not the only one that instantly thought of this skit!  😁  (With apologies to the original poster for continuing down this unrelated rabbit hole!)