johnbirt

I have found a workaround for my use case ! 😀 The PDFs that AFPub won't open will load and open in PDF Expert with no password involved. If you then set a password in Expert and then immediately remove it the resulting PDF will then open in AFPub. I haven't tried it but there are free PDF password setters/removers online which may well produce the same result for those without a PDF editor other than AFPub and can't open PDFs not created with AFPub. Looks like the encryption/decryption in PDF Expert wipes all passwords when password removal is used. Anyway it seems to work and at least gives a choice of app for me for editing.😀

Thanks Dan for very clear exposition of the situation. Maybe I can find a way of removing passwords outside AFPub and then be able to open for editing. Hopefully it will then enable easier addition of diagrams etc. via integration of the Affinity apps. Until then will have to continue with PDF Expert. Many thanks again Dan for you time in explaining the current situation.

Dan. My remark regarding corruption of file is a reference to I think an earlier reply to the original post in this thread. It was suggested there that one reason PDFs can’t be opened in AFPub is file corruption. That wouldn’t seem to be the reason for failure of my 2 examples as they open ok in other apps. It would appear that PDF Expert ignores owner passwords and looks only for a separate file password. I was unaware that there was such a thing as a owner password and assumed that a PDF had a password or not. The password I set on the copy file was definitely Magic which was set in PDF Expert and works in that. It remains a puzzle to my feeble brain that a PDF will open in one app without requiring any password and requires one in another but not the password you thought it was! The plot thickens. Hopefully the devs can make sense of it. Ideally there should be 1 password needed not 2? Thanks for looking into it. John B

The password for the copy PDF as posted is/was Magic There was to the best of my knowledge no password required in the original PDF. I added the password Magic not magic using PDF Expert which has no password issues with any of the PDFs I have thrown at it. It has been suggested that AFPub is picky about reading PDFs which it decides might have some errors and tends to give up interpreting the file as corrupt according to other posts. These days where handwriting recognition is “a thing” I would really expect any app to be similarly flexible in order to make the best of importing/reading a file with perhaps some minor descrepancies or variations from standard. Plenty of other readers/editors offer this without fuss.

Using Affinity Publisher 2.5.3 recently downloaded. AFPUB has always declined to open many PDFs. For example AQA GCSE older exam paper downloads. Usual problem/excuse was password protection. PDF Expert and numerous other PDF editors had no problem. In previous AFPub versions I have removed any password protection and still won't open. Latest version 2.5.3 won't open anything! I have a PDF which I have loaded in PDF Expert and saved with a password, When I attempt to open it in AFPub, Page Preview shows a red QN mark. Entering the password does nothing. The number of pages 1-21 is however shown. I provide this PDF which doesn't open. This is a mark scheme for a AQA Mathematics A-level paper freely available for download and not password protected. Missing fonts for it are displayed with suggested replacements but no option to open at least not on my system which is Mac Sonoma 14.5. The temporary password which works ok in PDF Expert is Magic. Other PDF files with no password at all show a preview of the first page but the option to open is greyed with cursor in the password input box expecting a password? I enclose 1 PDF which does preview but will not open. Pity I have to use the excellent PDF Expert which has no problem with anything when it would be so much better to have easy access to the Affinity apps via AFPub. Promises to sort out PDF opening issues were made way back when I posted with this issue but situation now seems worse now. Can't open anything! AQA-73572-MS-NOV21 copy.pdf AQA-83001H-QP-NOV20.PDF

Thanks for responses. I have several “fixes” but await this being sorted in Publisher. Nice to see it is on the list for future improvement. Currently using PDF Expert which does the job for now. Real advantage for me of Publisher would be easy integration with Photo and Designer. Thanks again. John B

I would specifically like to edit past mathematics examination papers in PDF format as provided by exam boards e.g. AQA etc. Affinity Publisher refuses to even open anything provided by AQA citing "non supported encryption method" as the reason. This seems a very severe restriction as almost any other editor I have will open and allow editing with no issue. For example PDF Expert for one and of course Adobe and others. Surely shouldn't be a major problem for Affinity to follow suit? It would certainly help greatly with editing exam solutions and particularly for the IPad Publlsher. Any hope of a solution for this restriction? Currently opening in an editor that does allow it and then saving in unencrypted form to enable use in Publisher is a real pain when you have multiple papers to deal with. I don't know why the papers have any encryption at all as they are freely available for download and printing and dissemination in schools and for individuals so seems rather pointless.

Excellent. Many thanks.

I am very occasional user of Affinity Photo. Had occasion to reduce a JPG from 500 x 500 to 300 x 300 in APhoto. Did so and saved. The file was being used to investigate embedding of album art in mp3 files. On examination of the mp3 data when embedded I saw that Affinity had added a whole wodge of metadata which I can do without. Hopefully there is a setting somewhere that prevents this being added in the first place? Would be grateful for being pointed in the right direction. Thank you.

I have both Photo and Designer on an iMac but recently purchased both for Win 10 as well. For the free stuff that comes with it i installed Skyfonts as suggested. I am running Win 10 1803 and began to experience complete unresponsiveness of the PC. The only thing that would work was the mouse pointer would move. No other response. A number of times I had to reboot and on a couple of occasions the machine wouldn't start past the desktop. When it did behave for a while start up was painfully slow and browser load was painful to watch. I noticed on a couple of occasions that a pop-up from Skyfonts was advising an issue with it not loading on boot. It occurred to me that this might be the overall issue so attempted to uninstall it. Was a long process and the uninstall seemed to do nothing for minutes but eventually very slowly completed. The PC seems now not to have the complete lockup issue. On doing some research complete uninstall of Skyfonts seems not straightforward as it leaves a lot of stuff behind and there are reports of it not going away completely. Can't say I have had any problems since getting rid. Hope this helps anyone with similar experiences.