tmd

Thanks @Dan C - yes that clears it up. Apologies for missing the Publisher reference… I didn’t see it hiding in the URL. Time for on-page page headers in the help files me thinks 😊
Another +1 for full integration to Designer then - especially as it has the capability already.
Thanks Dan.

Hi all
For anyone with the same frustration - an important workaround for this issue...
To see what is in your bleed area for a document where clip to canvas is enabled (for whatever reason) use the 'Outline' view to display element edges:
View > View Mode > Outline (Cmd+Y by default I believe).
This may be very confusing for a complex design, but it does at least show what is there.
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Major +1 for a "Disable Clip to Canvas and show pasteboard elements with art boards" feature request: displaying bleed area outside of an art board is pretty vital for software that's doing it's best (hooray!) to challenge Adobe. Print is still a fundamental part of communication and bleed is a fundamental part of that.
The clip to canvas feature, while great in terms of an uncluttered design view, is flawed. As soon as a document contains more than one art board (page/canvas/content area - not a discussion I want to get into here) the 'clip to canvas' (shouldn't that be "Clip to art board(s)"?) feature is automatically forced upon us with no way to properly see what's there. I assume this comes from a publishing-for-screen bias where bleed is (generally) not a requirement. I am guessing that the feature works the way it does so that NON RECTANGULAR art boards (wow!) can have clipping (from a developer's perspective). If true this would assume that Affinity are expecting non-rectangular screens to be a thing of the near future.... unless Affinity is preparing us for an 'Assembly' app that uses the elements created in Photo and Designer?
Or am I missing something?