Seneca

Yes, I understand that part, but here we were talking about the program automatically continuing the story at the end of the document, on whatever page the end happens to be, not necessarily on the "several pages later" that you have in mind.
 
Interesting point!
Thanks, as always.
 

Not a difficult thing to do. 

Of course it does. You tell it what text fame you want by drawing it on the page.
Let me be clear. I know how to solve this particular problem. If you create text boxes on facing pages on a master page and connect them then things work OK.
That's the method I would use for long documents anyway.
What I'm saying here is that there should be an equivalence, I think, that if somebody doesn't want to use text placeholders on master pages this way should work too. 
See the screencast:

secondary.mov

This is a case for a manual text placement. A publishing software like Publisher is not capable of reading your mind where the next page of an article should go.
We are talking here about automated way of placing text on each page.

if you don't tab out of the Number of Pages field in the Add Pages Dialogue Box and then go on to select a different master page from the pop-up menu the number of pages in this field switches back to 1.
If, however, you type the desired number of pages and then tab out of it the field the number remains as typed.
 

When would you want contents of a second text box created on page 1 to skip (say) fifty pages and continue on page 51?
(I admit to being dim.)

I don't think you did.
Create a new page and put a primary text frame. Insert enough text into this text frame so that when you shift-click the triangle new pages and text boxes are automatically added to the pages.
Go back to page 1. Create a secondary text frame and insert some text. Then shift-click the triangle to add this text the other pages. Instead this new text is added to new pages at the back of the existing pages. These text frames are never added on the existing pages.

As far as I know this area of Publisher is still work in progress so I don't think that anyone can suggest a design that is future-proof.
What you should do, though, is to keep all your documents up to date as regards to the latest Publisher beta so that if you need to make changes or update your documents at least you can open them.

These are all good candidates for scripting.

You can shade every other row (there is a bug, but it works). Unfortunately, the shading will go away when the TOC is regenerated/updated. So I would wait until formatting the TOC is the last thing to do.
So in the screen shot displayed below, there are two text boxes so once the formatting happens, you'll be able to still see the original.

Note the TOC Not Shaded paragraph style. TOC Shaded is based upon it. Both styles are linked as a Next Style so it will cycle through the paragraph styles.
Select the TOC entries:

Right-click over the TOC Not Shaded paragraph style and choose Apply TOC Not Shaded Then Apply Next.

And you would see this:

 
The (to me) bug is that each paragraph is actually the TOC Not Shaded style with the added highlight as an override. Each paragraph, even if based on, should have the actual paragraph style applied when doing the above.
Mike
 

I also think that this is rather clunky. I would rather have the More button extend the window to the bottom to reveal more of the current window and have all these options moved there.

Two points.
1. If you have an inDesign document you don't have to PDF it firs and then open it in Publisher. You should be able to just copy the text in inDesign and paste it into the Text frame in Publisher. This operation brings with it all the text as well as all the styles, which is nice.
2. With the latest Publisher beta you can now use GREP to search for carriage returns and swamp then with a space.

As far as I know they are working on it but because Publisher hasn't reached the feature complete stage yet it's hard to guest when this will happen and whether it's going to be available at launch or a bit later.

I'm on a Mac and the Escape key does work. 

Can you point me to any other publishing software that can read and write .indd files except inDesign and I'll be grateful?
I'm sure you meant read/write IDML files. If you mean that then this is coming. We need to be patient.
Publisher has not been released yet and new feature are being added constantly.
Once it reaches the feature complete status we may have a better idea about what it can do. 

This weekend just keeps on giving!!!
Thanks

This weekend just keeps on giving!!!
Thanks

Check this out:
 

You can do that in a million of other ways and you certainly don't need more than 2 pages per spread to do that.
So, it's a nice feature to have but most certainly not a must have feature.

I just think they should be more subtle like the Adobe palette.
I also think it shouldn't sit over the ✓ box only. It should span the entire name.
If this is an issue then perhaps do what Pixelmator Pro did? (attached)
 
I'll disagree on this point. because consistency in user experience is vital for any application - especially one targeted at designers and illustrators. A carefully well-designed palette would be the best thing. Maybe just double the amount of available colors instead.
 

Check this out:
 

No they don’t.   They deserve a pat on the back.    But so do the developers.  One huge thank you for putting up with some strange comments mixed in with thousands of potentially helpful forum entries.   Nobody is required to be on these forums.   I consider it a distinct privilege and also a matter of great satisfaction that I may possibly have helped in a miniscule way to making Publisher the wonderful product it is — and was from the start back on August 30.   It never WAS “terrible.”   

Regular Expressions!!!, wow!

With GREP features introduced earlier you should be able to do that in Publisher.
Just add a sentinell tag and delete it and apply a para style to it through GREP.
I too would start it with plain text, though.