Rory Mole

Hi there Amy,
It sounds like you are making progress with your book in Affinity Publisher.
I must say that I think the problems with footnotes come in when importing them from MS Word into Affinity Publisher.  
I've used Adobe InDesign CS6 in the past for book layout.  I have a client whose books have hundreds of footnotes which he created in MS Word and when importing his documents into Affinity Publisher, I have had to "clean up" his text styles section.  When he wrote his books, he would copy and paste different articles from off the internet and put them into his word documents.  As the text was pasted into the Word document, it would bring along with it a whole bunch of unnecessary formatting from the documents online.  This created incredible problems when importing into other software, even Adobe InDesign.  
I can also say that Adobe InDesign has a more evolved form of MS Word importing which is quite good and I have not had the problems I have encountered with Affinity Publisher.
I hope you continue to press on to learn more so that you achieve the success you desire.
Kind Regards to you....

Hi there Amy,
Thank you for your question.  I am hoping that my answer will help you.
See my screenshot image.
First, create a style for footnotes text. Yes! Edit "footnote Reference" Character style.  This is very important.  Go through the settings carefully.  If you get it wrong you can go back and edit again. Create a "Footnotes number" Character style as well.  I suggest add a new page below your other pages and just type any single digit number there.  Apply whatever font to it and size etc. Go to the text styles panel and create the character style for that number.  Be careful with spacing and other things.   Once all of that is set up correctly, then go to the "Notes" tab and put in the settings as you see them in my uploaded image. Hopefully your footnotes will come right and be as you expected.  You might need to play around with those notes settings to get it right as you like it.

Hope this answer helps you.

Hi there Walt,

Thank you for your message here.

I have definitely been into the Notes Panel and have tried all sorts of different settings.
Since I last posted here I have found the solution.  Firstly, the problem was with the MS Word file that was imported.  Word sets up 2 text styles to do with footnotes, a character style and a paragraph style.  For some reason after importing the MS Word document across, the footnote text is very small at the bottom of the page.  My problem persisted even after trying to edit the imported text styles from MS Word, that they continued to stay the same size, about 7pts instead of 10 as it was in the text style applied to footnotes.  The solution is that I first set up a paragraph style for the footnotes below the text and then I went into the Notes tab and applied that to the footnote text below. It has finally worked so well that I can style the footnote text any way I like and it looks fantastic.  It took me a couple of days to work this out.

Thanks to everyone who has replied to my original question.
Regards to you all.

After buying Affinity suite the other day I was happy that footnotes etc was added to version2.  I cannot use Adobe InDesign anymore and my CS6 version does not work on the Mac OS Big Sur upgrade I did to enable me to purchase Affinity.  I was able to import all footnotes through MS Word no problem, but all update were made in Adobe InDesign, so spelling and grammar adjustments are lost and have to be done in the word file. Layouts done in past projects I did for clients and brought into Affinity by importing the IDML files has left me with a sour taste in my mouth.  Footnotes do not come along with the rest of the text and text styles into Affinity Publisher at all.  This is bad.  This is the very reason we are making the transition away from Adobe and being able to bring projects into Affinity if there are future updates to books etc that need us to open the original layouts within Affinity.

Please, please, please Affinity, update the IDML import ability to enable footnotes, endnotes etc to be intact and into Affinity and bring it up to scratch.  This is very important.

After buying Affinity suite the other day I was happy that footnotes etc was added to version2.  I cannot use Adobe InDesign anymore and my CS6 version does not work on the Mac OS Big Sur upgrade I did to enable me to purchase Affinity.  I was able to import all footnotes through MS Word no problem, but all update were made in Adobe InDesign, so spelling and grammar adjustments are lost and have to be done in the word file. Layouts done in past projects I did for clients and brought into Affinity by importing the IDML files has left me with a sour taste in my mouth.  Footnotes do not come along with the rest of the text and text styles into Affinity Publisher at all.  This is bad.  This is the very reason we are making the transition away from Adobe and being able to bring projects into Affinity if there are future updates to books etc that need us to open the original layouts within Affinity.

Please, please, please Affinity, update the IDML import ability to enable footnotes, endnotes etc to be intact and into Affinity and bring it up to scratch.  This is very important.

Hi there Walt,

Thank you for your message here.

I have definitely been into the Notes Panel and have tried all sorts of different settings.
Since I last posted here I have found the solution.  Firstly, the problem was with the MS Word file that was imported.  Word sets up 2 text styles to do with footnotes, a character style and a paragraph style.  For some reason after importing the MS Word document across, the footnote text is very small at the bottom of the page.  My problem persisted even after trying to edit the imported text styles from MS Word, that they continued to stay the same size, about 7pts instead of 10 as it was in the text style applied to footnotes.  The solution is that I first set up a paragraph style for the footnotes below the text and then I went into the Notes tab and applied that to the footnote text below. It has finally worked so well that I can style the footnote text any way I like and it looks fantastic.  It took me a couple of days to work this out.

Thanks to everyone who has replied to my original question.
Regards to you all.

Hi there Walt,
Thanks ever so much.  
I also want to mention that all other text styles in MS Word do not behave in the same way.  For some reason, all those text styles are added into the MS Word document even before the import is done by Affinity Publisher.  Would you recommend that I remove them before the import within MS Word or afterwards inside of Publisher.

Kind Regards to you.

Hi there Walt,

Thank you for your message here.

I have definitely been into the Notes Panel and have tried all sorts of different settings.
Since I last posted here I have found the solution.  Firstly, the problem was with the MS Word file that was imported.  Word sets up 2 text styles to do with footnotes, a character style and a paragraph style.  For some reason after importing the MS Word document across, the footnote text is very small at the bottom of the page.  My problem persisted even after trying to edit the imported text styles from MS Word, that they continued to stay the same size, about 7pts instead of 10 as it was in the text style applied to footnotes.  The solution is that I first set up a paragraph style for the footnotes below the text and then I went into the Notes tab and applied that to the footnote text below. It has finally worked so well that I can style the footnote text any way I like and it looks fantastic.  It took me a couple of days to work this out.

Thanks to everyone who has replied to my original question.
Regards to you all.

Hi there Walt,

Thank you for your message here.

I have definitely been into the Notes Panel and have tried all sorts of different settings.
Since I last posted here I have found the solution.  Firstly, the problem was with the MS Word file that was imported.  Word sets up 2 text styles to do with footnotes, a character style and a paragraph style.  For some reason after importing the MS Word document across, the footnote text is very small at the bottom of the page.  My problem persisted even after trying to edit the imported text styles from MS Word, that they continued to stay the same size, about 7pts instead of 10 as it was in the text style applied to footnotes.  The solution is that I first set up a paragraph style for the footnotes below the text and then I went into the Notes tab and applied that to the footnote text below. It has finally worked so well that I can style the footnote text any way I like and it looks fantastic.  It took me a couple of days to work this out.

Thanks to everyone who has replied to my original question.
Regards to you all.

Hi there Walt,

Thank you for your message here.

I have definitely been into the Notes Panel and have tried all sorts of different settings.
Since I last posted here I have found the solution.  Firstly, the problem was with the MS Word file that was imported.  Word sets up 2 text styles to do with footnotes, a character style and a paragraph style.  For some reason after importing the MS Word document across, the footnote text is very small at the bottom of the page.  My problem persisted even after trying to edit the imported text styles from MS Word, that they continued to stay the same size, about 7pts instead of 10 as it was in the text style applied to footnotes.  The solution is that I first set up a paragraph style for the footnotes below the text and then I went into the Notes tab and applied that to the footnote text below. It has finally worked so well that I can style the footnote text any way I like and it looks fantastic.  It took me a couple of days to work this out.

Thanks to everyone who has replied to my original question.
Regards to you all.

Hi there Walt,

Thank you for your message here.

I have definitely been into the Notes Panel and have tried all sorts of different settings.
Since I last posted here I have found the solution.  Firstly, the problem was with the MS Word file that was imported.  Word sets up 2 text styles to do with footnotes, a character style and a paragraph style.  For some reason after importing the MS Word document across, the footnote text is very small at the bottom of the page.  My problem persisted even after trying to edit the imported text styles from MS Word, that they continued to stay the same size, about 7pts instead of 10 as it was in the text style applied to footnotes.  The solution is that I first set up a paragraph style for the footnotes below the text and then I went into the Notes tab and applied that to the footnote text below. It has finally worked so well that I can style the footnote text any way I like and it looks fantastic.  It took me a couple of days to work this out.

Thanks to everyone who has replied to my original question.
Regards to you all.

Hi there Petar, 

I'm not sure what is happening here about my comment, but I hope you understand the need to import Microsoft Word files into Publisher which have footnotes applied to them by authors.  Publisher can "Place" Microsoft Word files into a Publisher document, but with limitations. One of the big limitations is that Publisher does not support footnotes and endnotes at the moment, therefore any footnotes or endnotes that an MS Word document has in it will not be applied to the Publisher document when they are "Placed".
This feature needs to be added to Publisher.

Try telling millions of writers that they should not be using MS Word for their manuscripts because it's a "donkey" program.  Lots of people us MS Word still.
The development team at Affinity, put the ability into Publisher to be able to "Place" MS Word document content into a Publisher document.  I'm sure they are working on adding lots more capability to the "Place" function in Publisher to have many more features options available.

Hope this gives a bit more clarity to my thoughts.
 
 

The reason for the importing of footnotes and endnotes from Microsoft word documents is this:

I layout academic books for clients who put their own footnotes into Microsoft word which is their writing software of choice for their manuscript.  When I layout their book in a layout program such as Affinity Publisher, I want to have the ability to "place" or "import" their manuscripts which contain lots of footnotes and/or endnotes.  I do not want to have to manually add 500+ footnotes into their sentences of text on pages in Affinity Publisher.  Adobe InDesign has this ability and I am wanting to completely move away from Adobe. This is not going backwards from a horse to a donkey as you have questioned, it is just how things are in the book publishing industry.

 

The reason for the importing of footnotes and endnotes from Microsoft word documents is this:

I layout academic books for clients who put their own footnotes into Microsoft word which is their writing software of choice for their manuscript.  When I layout their book in a layout program such as Affinity Publisher, I want to have the ability to "place" or "import" their manuscripts which contain lots of footnotes and/or endnotes.  I do not want to have to manually add 500+ footnotes into their sentences of text on pages in Affinity Publisher.  Adobe InDesign has this ability and I am wanting to completely move away from Adobe. This is not going backwards from a horse to a donkey as you have questioned, it is just how things are in the book publishing industry.

 

The reason for the importing of footnotes and endnotes from Microsoft word documents is this:

I layout academic books for clients who put their own footnotes into Microsoft word which is their writing software of choice for their manuscript.  When I layout their book in a layout program such as Affinity Publisher, I want to have the ability to "place" or "import" their manuscripts which contain lots of footnotes and/or endnotes.  I do not want to have to manually add 500+ footnotes into their sentences of text on pages in Affinity Publisher.  Adobe InDesign has this ability and I am wanting to completely move away from Adobe. This is not going backwards from a horse to a donkey as you have questioned, it is just how things are in the book publishing industry.

 

The reason for the importing of footnotes and endnotes from Microsoft word documents is this:

I layout academic books for clients who put their own footnotes into Microsoft word which is their writing software of choice for their manuscript.  When I layout their book in a layout program such as Affinity Publisher, I want to have the ability to "place" or "import" their manuscripts which contain lots of footnotes and/or endnotes.  I do not want to have to manually add 500+ footnotes into their sentences of text on pages in Affinity Publisher.  Adobe InDesign has this ability and I am wanting to completely move away from Adobe. This is not going backwards from a horse to a donkey as you have questioned, it is just how things are in the book publishing industry.

 

The reason for the importing of footnotes and endnotes from Microsoft word documents is this:

I layout academic books for clients who put their own footnotes into Microsoft word which is their writing software of choice for their manuscript.  When I layout their book in a layout program such as Affinity Publisher, I want to have the ability to "place" or "import" their manuscripts which contain lots of footnotes and/or endnotes.  I do not want to have to manually add 500+ footnotes into their sentences of text on pages in Affinity Publisher.  Adobe InDesign has this ability and I am wanting to completely move away from Adobe. This is not going backwards from a horse to a donkey as you have questioned, it is just how things are in the book publishing industry.

 

I think someone has asked for the following concerning footnotes and endnotes.
The ability to import footnotes and endnotes in Microsoft Word files.   The ability to format footnotes in the footer section of the document.  What I mean is fully format the text, spacing, etc. It would be so good if the Affinity Development Team makes this available soon.  

Hi there to you all,

Thanks so much for your efforts to bring us Affinity Publisher.  It's very much appreciated.

For the purpose of automation, I am setting up a document as a spread with a number of pages for a book.  I have successfully set up Master Page A with running headers at the top on both sides and page numbers in the "footer" section in the centre of both facing pages.  I want the first page of every chapter to start on the right hand side which is what AP is able to do very well.  I have created a new single Master Page and called it B.  I am trying to have a decorative glyph in the centre of the page just above halfway down the page.  This is relatively easy to do.  When I assign Master Page B to the first page the 

Hi there to you all,

Thanks so much for your efforts to bring us Affinity Publisher.  It's very much appreciated.

For the purpose of automation, I am setting up a document as a spread with a number of pages for a book.  I have successfully set up Master Page A with running headers at the top on both sides and page numbers in the "footer" section in the centre of both facing pages.  I want the first page of every chapter to start on the right hand side which is what AP is able to do very well.  I have created a new single Master Page and called it B.  I am trying to have a decorative glyph in the centre of the page just above halfway down the page.  This is relatively easy to do.  When I assign Master Page B to the first page the 

Hi there to you guys,

I've been waiting a long time for AP to come out.  I have Designer and Photo already and they are amazing.  
I've been doing book layout design for books my wife and I write and up until now I've been using Adobe InDesign CS6 which has worked extremely well.  I like their "book" feature where you compile individual chapter files until you are done and then compile the book up through the book feature.  There the table of contents is implemented, synchronising of styles, etc and then the entire book export to pdf and ePub. 

I am not sure what Affinity Publisher will be able to do in that department.  InDesign has a very good layout ability in terms of spacing of words in a block of text.  Word Processors do not possess such ability.  Text spacing and layout in Apple Pages is not on a par with InDesign.  I was hoping that Affinity Publisher would offer better layout of block text than InDesign.

I am still checking Affinity Publisher out at the moment and hope that we'll see something amazing coming forth with the release of the commercial version soon.

Regards.... 

Hi there to you guys,

I've been waiting a long time for AP to come out.  I have Designer and Photo already and they are amazing.  
I've been doing book layout design for books my wife and I write and up until now I've been using Adobe InDesign CS6 which has worked extremely well.  I like their "book" feature where you compile individual chapter files until you are done and then compile the book up through the book feature.  There the table of contents is implemented, synchronising of styles, etc and then the entire book export to pdf and ePub. 

I am not sure what Affinity Publisher will be able to do in that department.  InDesign has a very good layout ability in terms of spacing of words in a block of text.  Word Processors do not possess such ability.  Text spacing and layout in Apple Pages is not on a par with InDesign.  I was hoping that Affinity Publisher would offer better layout of block text than InDesign.

I am still checking Affinity Publisher out at the moment and hope that we'll see something amazing coming forth with the release of the commercial version soon.

Regards.... 

Hi there to you guys,
 
I've spent a couple of days looking into various options concerning showing bleed marks in the exported/slices option in export persona.  I've been designing my book covers in AD using 3 Art Boards in the same document.  Obviously there is an artboard for the "Front Cover" then another for the "Spine" and lastly one for the "Back Cover".
Here is the procedure that I've followed to have the bleed visible in the exported pdf document of the book cover as one document.
Seeing I'm creating my book cover to a trim size of A5 which is 148mm x 210mm, I create the document at that exact size.  Once I have the 1st Artboard created in AD which is for the Front Cover, I hold down the Option key on Mac and drag out a copy of the First Artboard into a second one for the Back Cover and lay it along the left of the first Artboard. I then drag out another Artboard using the Option Key on Mac and resize it to the spine width needed.  The spine gets moved into position so that it is in between the front and back covers.  I then rename all 3 Artboards individually by the following :- "Front Cover", "Spine" and "Back Cover." I then go to the document setup in each artboard and set the bleed sizes to 3mm all round.  This I do for all the artboards.  I also set the Margin sizes to be 5mm all round as well. I then create the backgrounds for all Artboards to extend beyond the Artboard sizes by 3 mm all round.  Therefore, only the Backgrounds, when clicked on show that they extend over the edge of the Artboards by 3mm.  If you collapse the layer structure groups to just show the artboard, you won't see the background extending over the sides.  This is important to understand. I then create all the inner content on the Front, Back and Spine Artboards to stay within the margins I set in the document setup under the file menu. Once my book cover is complete, I group all three Artboards in the Draw Persona into one group and rename it to something like "Book Cover". I then go into the Export Persona and click on the "Layers" Tab.  Under the layers Tab I see the "Book Cover" Group there. I then go to the slice tool and drag out one slice over the whole document.  The size of the slice needs to be exactly the same size as the full book cover measurement in mm plus the 3 mm  added on.  Therefore the slice is larger than the actual document.  This will accommodate the bleed of 3 mm set around the whole document. I then click on the slices Tab, still in the Export Persona, and rename the slice I just created to another name. In the Slices Tab there is another slice called  background.  I only select the renamed slice that I created.  I do not select the background slice. I then click on Export Options Tab and choose the PDF Print option. I then scroll down to the section of "Include Bleed"and select it, and then select "Include crop marks. I then deselect "Include registration marks", "Include colour bars", "Include page information". "Subset Fonts" and "Allow advanced features" are both selected. I then click on the Slices Tab again. I make sure that the slice I created is still selected and has a check in the check box. I then click on the "Export Slices" button at the bottom of the page. The entire "Book Cover Image" is exported as a PDF document to a location I can choose on my Mac.  You'll notice when you view the exported book cover, that it is complete with the 3mm bleed all the way round and the crop marks are at those positions on all 4 corners of the document with a white border around.  The white border is ok.  That's it. 
This method has worked for me after much trial and error. Attached is an incomplete book cover to illustrate this process. Book Cover.pdf

Hi there to you guys,
 
I've spent a couple of days looking into various options concerning showing bleed marks in the exported/slices option in export persona.  I've been designing my book covers in AD using 3 Art Boards in the same document.  Obviously there is an artboard for the "Front Cover" then another for the "Spine" and lastly one for the "Back Cover".
Here is the procedure that I've followed to have the bleed visible in the exported pdf document of the book cover as one document.
Seeing I'm creating my book cover to a trim size of A5 which is 148mm x 210mm, I create the document at that exact size.  Once I have the 1st Artboard created in AD which is for the Front Cover, I hold down the Option key on Mac and drag out a copy of the First Artboard into a second one for the Back Cover and lay it along the left of the first Artboard. I then drag out another Artboard using the Option Key on Mac and resize it to the spine width needed.  The spine gets moved into position so that it is in between the front and back covers.  I then rename all 3 Artboards individually by the following :- "Front Cover", "Spine" and "Back Cover." I then go to the document setup in each artboard and set the bleed sizes to 3mm all round.  This I do for all the artboards.  I also set the Margin sizes to be 5mm all round as well. I then create the backgrounds for all Artboards to extend beyond the Artboard sizes by 3 mm all round.  Therefore, only the Backgrounds, when clicked on show that they extend over the edge of the Artboards by 3mm.  If you collapse the layer structure groups to just show the artboard, you won't see the background extending over the sides.  This is important to understand. I then create all the inner content on the Front, Back and Spine Artboards to stay within the margins I set in the document setup under the file menu. Once my book cover is complete, I group all three Artboards in the Draw Persona into one group and rename it to something like "Book Cover". I then go into the Export Persona and click on the "Layers" Tab.  Under the layers Tab I see the "Book Cover" Group there. I then go to the slice tool and drag out one slice over the whole document.  The size of the slice needs to be exactly the same size as the full book cover measurement in mm plus the 3 mm  added on.  Therefore the slice is larger than the actual document.  This will accommodate the bleed of 3 mm set around the whole document. I then click on the slices Tab, still in the Export Persona, and rename the slice I just created to another name. In the Slices Tab there is another slice called  background.  I only select the renamed slice that I created.  I do not select the background slice. I then click on Export Options Tab and choose the PDF Print option. I then scroll down to the section of "Include Bleed"and select it, and then select "Include crop marks. I then deselect "Include registration marks", "Include colour bars", "Include page information". "Subset Fonts" and "Allow advanced features" are both selected. I then click on the Slices Tab again. I make sure that the slice I created is still selected and has a check in the check box. I then click on the "Export Slices" button at the bottom of the page. The entire "Book Cover Image" is exported as a PDF document to a location I can choose on my Mac.  You'll notice when you view the exported book cover, that it is complete with the 3mm bleed all the way round and the crop marks are at those positions on all 4 corners of the document with a white border around.  The white border is ok.  That's it. 
This method has worked for me after much trial and error. Attached is an incomplete book cover to illustrate this process. Book Cover.pdf