Ralph

I can reinforce @thomaso's problem with tendonitis! I had my first "microcomputer" in the 1970's and didn't switch to a tablet when they became available. I am now suffering. Irrespective of the technical arguments, I would encourage using a mouse as little as possible for fine work. Having said that, I still use a mouse most of the time - because the damage done to my nerve-endings over the years has resulted in a tremble which is more difficult to compensate for with a tablet than with a mouse.

Well ... swearing at the screen while I explored the forum seems to have done the trick. Publisher 2.0.3 is now opening and obeying! In case it's of interest to anybody who knows what they are talking about, I really did "do NOTHING" !

Following the invitation, on opening Publisher2, to update to 2.0.3, the installation failed with: Prior update of Photo2 had been successful. Windows10, i7 processor Help!

... though I still can't help comparing Publisher with my car: My car has so many "features" that, after a year, I am still discovering the nuances of the parking sensor feature. It also has all four wheels. My previous car had few features, but it also had 4 wheels. I could use my old car, perhaps with a touch of envy for my neighbour - whose car had lots features, and 4 wheels. I wouldn't envy my neighbour even if his car could fly, if it had a wheel missing. Afffinity, to me, can orbit the Earth - but Publisher has a wheel missing, It is SO frustrating !!!

I'm getting too old now to be bothered any more!

Can I just congratulate Serif for its outstanding Customer Service, in general but specifically for offering a refund to CarolJames97.

I think @MJWHM's last post had a couple of typos which, if I'm right, gives a rather different slant to the sentence: "The ambivalence of the form is at once its strength and its weakness. But this really does not forward the please for AP to implement the features they originally provided in Serif PagePlus X9." Change "form" to "forum" and "please" to "pleas" and the sentence focusses on the objective (as I see it) of the forum - what Affinity can (or can not) do. Apologies @MJWHMif I have mis-understood you. In my opinion, Serif should have (in the distant past!) provided a basic (open to interpretation) set of actions for all the functions of a DTP and then progressively "dug deeper" into each. What I see is some functions with incredible depth - some so deep that I have never heard of them! - and others (like Footnotes) which have been ignored. Of course I would like Footnotes with the detail raised by a number of correspondents, but I don't want to wait till the twenty second century until every detail is incorporated. I am happy to modify my working practices to accommodate Affinity's short-comings. Long Live PagePlus.

Hi Eusebius, You are a lot more perceptive than I am!

Thanks, @PaulEC. I forgot that bit! And thanks for your kind comment @EkimEnaid. For the sake of completeness: Create the Apub file with Master pages set for "facing pages", then export to the agreed (with printer) PDF format. That gives the printer single pages to layout on his stock paper in any manner he pleases. For example, if you want (say) 100 copies of a 100 page book, a big printer might run it off over lunch on a laser printer . They might even prefer facing pages and cut the resultant output on a guillotine. If you want (say) 1000 copies of the same book, they might lay it up on A0 (or bigger) paper, using their software to make sure the pages come out in the right order. Which reminds me that, when you ask for quotes, get a few for different numbers of copies. Because of the time needed to set up the job, the actual cost of printing can be relatively small [(Cost) = (Setup) + (Number)*(Cost per copy)]. You may get a a lot of extra copies for very little cost.

I would suggest you have some thinking to do before you home in on a supplier of templates! Even before talking to your printer, make sure you have some idea of the number you will have printed - who will buy it? This will help determine the way the printer wants to set up the book. You mention the number of pages (101). Is this 101 SIDES of paper (pages!) or the number of A4 sheets of paper to be used - printed on both sides and thus halving the number of sheets of paper. Then there is the thickness of the paper, which defines the width of the spine. If you are aiming for a high quality product, you will probably want to use thick (-ish) paper. Copier paper is about 70 gsm (grammes per square metre): decent letterhead paper about 100gsm. Translating this into thickness is not straight forward but for a book of this size you can probably work with 0.5cm to 1cm per 100 sheets. As others have said, Affinity is agnostic to the type of binding, but your printer may have an opinion, based on the calculated thickness. Most printers will also want your colour mode to be CMYK (i.e. 4 different colours which mix to form the required colour). Screens prefer an RGB profile. You will need to check every image file (in APhoto) and , if necessary, convert the mode (Document>Convert format). You will probably want the "inner" margin to be wider than the "outer" margin, which is something that APub does automatically when you set up "facing pages". (If you do this, your output will be on 26 sheets of A3 (101/4)). If you do not use facing pages, you will need two Master pages - one with the spine on the left, the other with the spine on the right. Printers also have their preferred file format. It is possible that you might find one who can use APub files, but it is much more likely that you will be asked for a PDF file. There are many varieties of PDF file and you need to check that your printer can handle the same versions that APub can export (highly likely). This also means checking that any imported PDFs are compliant. Alternatively, some publishers/printers have software which takes a file of assorted A4 sheets and does all this thinking for you. Either way, after a few books it becomes second nature. If only to be able to make informed decisions, as @PaulEC says, it is worth getting quotes from local printers, quizzing them about their requirements and asking for their recommendations. Good luck.

And therein lies the rub! We all have different priorities. I would ask for a level that was consistent with the subset of the features that exist in all other DTP packages. That is, if AppA has features 1,2,3,5 and AppB has 2,4,5,6, then Afpub should aspire to 2 & 5 for starters. Or perhaps the features that were first launched in PagePlus, since apparently it is the same development team that created PagePlus Footnotes which is working on Affinity Footnotes. All this has been said many times before in this thread and it has to be an accolade to Publisher that so many people persevere in their efforts to get something implemented.

Try using Publisher's print option (File>Print) - not export. If you are printing on A4 card, that would mean sizing the pages at A5, flipping on the short side and setting the model to "Booklet". The output would be pages 4 (left) and 1 on one side, pages 2 (left) and 3 on the other side of the paper. For some unknown reason, the Booklet option is not available in Designer or Photo. To print from these apps, you need to rely on your printer's options.

Don't forget footnotes Bryan (:

May I suggest you transfer issues with file management etc. to another thread. That would allow this thread to focus on the issue of the lack of footnotes in Affinity Publisher. A final thought: have you tried "Goodsync" for file backup? And a final, final, thought: a "proper" backup system will add something to the file name each time it is saved. That is the only way of making sure every version can be held in perpetuity.