Jeffjn

It doesn't seem to have. The "Crossreference" feature appears to to be the same. It was the first thing I checked!

FWIW, I had this issue, at least I assume it was the Net Framework issue, as my laptop had not installed that update and was fine, but my desktop had and would crash whenever I opened a large save file with what looked like a memeory leak. Instead of removing the Net Framework update, I noticed that the 22H2 feature update was pending. I let that install and the issue went away.

EXACTLY THREE YEARS LATER 🙂 I appreciate the video showing the workround, but I really think Affinity should be implementing this feature properly by now.

I'm posting again on this thread, but this time with good news - it looks like this has been fixed in 10.4. I've managed to merge the three parts of the latest update of my book. It's using 10gB of menory, but that's not growing as I sit here. 720 pages and at least 300 illustrations.... I'm going to trad carefully, but it's looking good.

Having installed the 1.10 update with eager anticiption, bearing in mind it's claims to have done a great deal of work on Memory Management, I'm sad to report that this issue for me is still occuring. At this stage I'm trying to merge the section of the book so I can work with just one file, making indexing less painful as well as simplying the publishing process, but I'm seeing the same issues with silent crashes as soon as I approach the page/illustration counts that was causing me issues before. Is there anyone at Afinity who could take another look at this? I'm happy to work with them to provide examples and bug reports.

I'm just bumping this after all this time to see if anyone bites. I've since had to just use merged PDFs to create my next book.

ADDED - I've remembered one that is very easy to replicate. Load the large file I posted earlier, then save it with a different file name. Now close AP and restart it (to clear out any memory it is hanging on to). Open the first file. Wait for the CPU load to drop to be sure the task is completely finished. Leave the first document open open and open the copy you just created. After while open the task manager. It will be using about 15% CPU (in my case) or more on a slower machine. You can sit and watch that all day, the file never loads. If you want to close AP you have to use the task manager.

Thanks for the reply Pauls. When this does get fixed, will you post back here please? I don't think its the only issue with large files, but the most obvious one to demonstrate.

I'm going to have to bump this thead, sorry. Are you guys looking at this, or shall I produce another bug receipe? (believe me, it's not hard to do so )

PDFSaM seems to do the trick. Thanks Paul, and goodbye Adobe Now, about this bug....

Many Thanks PaulEC, I'll try those later today 🙂

Thanks. I did google the subject, and downloaded one of the most likely looking (which didn't work with my files). Some of the google results offered a service (Upload your files and we will merge them, which is a good way to put something in the public domain). One site said that the least stress-free and safest way was to buy Acrobat, and as I was past my deadline I succumbed. However, if you have a recomendation I'd love to hear it, as I now have time to experiment and don't want to spend £180 a year! AP should be able to do this as one PDF, just like Page Plus, because I don't want to manually merge the indexes, which is the real pain.

Hopefully this is still being investigated - it's happening in the latest beta as well. Can I reproduce some more of the bugs I've seen, or should I wait for this one to be investigated first? Thanks

Thank you. I'll poke about a bit, but wait for their feedback before pestering you with more information 🙂

Ah, Progress! I'm assuming that's the intial receipe, not the second one. I didn't realise (until just now) that Onedrive also monitored the Desktop and Documents folders when I previously tried eliminating it from my tests. However, I've briefly tried the following: Moved all my data files to a new folder on my C drive that isn't monitored by Onedrive. Told Onedrive to stop monioring Documents, Pictures and the Desktop Stopped Onedrive from starting up when Windows starts Rebooted the computer Tried the receipe with the files from the new isolated folder. Sadly, the same crash straight to the desktop is still occuring. I have to go out now, but would there be anything else I don't know about using Onedrive that might be relevant? Does Publisher put files somewhere that might still be monitored?

Thanks Pauls I've now made sure that my desktop machine is completely up to date. No Windows updates outstanding, graphics drivers up to date according the Windows. I've also fired up my laptop. This is considerably less powerful than my desktop - an i7 6500U running at 2..5GHz, Intel 520 HD graphics and 8GB Ram. This is also now up to date. Both machines are running the 549 beta, both machines reproduce the crash as I've described. Just in case my receipe is ambiguous in some way, I've attached a screen recording of the event on my desktop: Affinty Publisher screen capture of crash.mp4 Is there some way to reset Publisher so that any Preferences I've set over time could restored to the "factory" default? What about my software enviroment - I use Onedrive, for example, but there are also a few other background tasks that might be interfering. Is there a "safe mode" that I could emulate? I'm assuming that Photo and Designer don't need to be running matching builds of the betas for this type of activity? Another Bug Receipe This one gives a hang, not a crash. Open Publisher Load Part 1 up to chapter 12 for bug report Open the Resource Manager Use Shift select to select all the resources – they are currently Embedded Click on Collect In the Choose folder for collection dialogue, create a new folder to place the resources – I’ve created it on my desktop in this instance, and named it Collected Part 1 Select the folder and then click on Collect. The Dialogue closes and Affinty starts putting the Resource files into the folder. After a short time Publisher becomes unresponsive. If you switch to File Explorer and look at the folder, the resource files have all been added to the Collected folder. Open the task manager and you will see that Publisher is still using CPU cycles - about 15% in the case of my desktop machine, 30% on my laptop. I can leave Publisher for hours in this state and it never responds and eventually an End Task or Reboot is required to close Publisher. I have a number of other ways to crash Publisher. None of them happen until the document content starts to reach a certain size. However, untill you can reproduce them, or the crash report is more helpful, I'm not sure what to do. As I said in the other thread, I've spent many days trying to work round the various issues, and just when I think I have a workflow, something else rears it's head. Thanks for investigating this.

OK, installed the 549 beta and got the same resulting crash. Report attached. Are you using a later build than 549? ef58a812-6eec-415a-bae9-f62bf34602f1.dmp

Thanks Pauls Just emptied the crash report folder, tried the process again and the result was the same - i've attached the resulting crash report. However, I've just noticed that the public beta is now 549, I'm running 535. So I'll upgrade and try the test again. a70eca9e-f3f9-439d-94a5-76c16f0c97e1.dmp

I’ve been having numerous issues trying to use Publisher to create an update of a book I’ve successfully published using Page Plus over the last few years. There are a number of symptoms, all of them resulting in a crash. I’ve had to split the book into two parts, manually merging the TOCs and Indexs and merging the PDFs in Acrobat (which cost three times more than AP!). I now have time to try and isolate the issue and have what I hope is a reproducable example of just one of the problems when the book size approaches the half way point, and I’m hoping that someone from Serif can investigate why AP doesn’t have the same functionality of PP9. I've discussed this with other users here - I’ve attached two files. Both have been doctored so that they would be of no use to someone trying to use the content (so that I can put them in the public domain). In the process of the doctoring I may have introduced some formatting errors that don’t exist in the original files so please ignore any misplaced illustrations. The files both have embedded illustrations. This means anyone can load them without access to the linked illustrations, but I can demonstrate later that using linked files changes the symptoms but still results in crashes (in fact the onset of issues is often earlier!) I’ve been using the latest betas in the hope that the issue may get fixed, you you will need to be running 1.8.535, but this has been happening ever since AP was released. Part 1 up to chapter 12 for bug report.AFPUB is about 570Mb in size. It has 379 pages and about 350 illustrations. Some are image files, some are AD files. It also has a TOC and Index. You will also need Chapter 13 for bug report.AFPUB. It’s 28Mb, has 32 pages and 36 illustrations. It has index marks and the TOC picks up the Chapter and Section headings. The Part 1 file should load OK. Locate the last page before the index – page 370 – in Pages in the Studio and right click to select Add pages from File. Locate the Chapter 13 files and select Open. I just get a crash straight back to the desktop. There are other types of crashes. Often I see a constant CPU usage around 15% while trying to load a large file I’ve managed to create, particularly when using Linked resources. The file never loads. I’ve been through a lot of the part 1 file to optimise it, but there is room to do so more. However, what I’ve found is that it tends just to move the point at which AP becomes unstable a bit further along. If I delete a lot of the illustrations from Chapter 13, it will load. Then when I try to load the next chapter, it crashes. The book is over 600 pages, so we aren’t even 2/3rdsdone. …and just to reiterate, Page Plus 9 can handle the whole book, without using Bookplus. My computer has 32Gb of memory and 400Gb free on it’s main SSD. Graphics – 1070TI, CPU 4Ghz i7, so I don’t think I’m underpowered. Part_1_up_to_chapter_12_for_bug_report.afpub Chapter_13_for_Bug_report.afpub

Thank you gentlemen I need to find a day to break down the book into chapters again, make sure that the illustrations aren't too big, and then reassemble the project. Hopefully I can then produce a reproducible bug that I can post on the bug forum (or even better, manage to create the whole book as one file). Seems like the "too many files" error isn't something that is common?

Thanks for those insights. The point about sizing illustrations is something I can investigate as I've been a bit erratic with including them, trying to take advantage of being able to import Designer files. However, the CPU/RAM/Graphics issue seems less likely to be a cause of the failures I'm having. My desktop has a 8 core 4Ghz CPU, 32 Gb Ram and a 1070Ti GTX card. There is 300Gb free on the SSD C: drive and 2 Tb free on the data drive. However, the same point of failure (with the same symptoms descibed above) occurs with the same files on my laptop (4-core 2.5Ghz, 8Gb of Ram. 520 Intel graphics and 40Gb free on the only SSD drive). If computer resources were an issue, I would expect the laptop to fall over sooner. You seem to have tested projects that approach my book size (on a Mac?) but what happenes when the test fails - what error messages of types of crashes do you experince? I'm particularly interested in the message about too many files being open. Thanks for your help

Thanks for the link, which I've read, but it looks like you didn't read the details of my post (or just wanted to point me to some negative feedback). I've been succesfully publishing books of the same or even larger size using Serif's Page Plus 9 (and earlier 32 bit versions) for about five years now. So, for the book I'm publishing (no footnotes, no bibliography, no maths formula), Serif Page Plus is exactly the right tool for the job . I've waited until Publisher had Float with text (and Designer had arrowheads) and for Publisher to be out of beta. The only thing I'm mssing is proper cross-referencing and I can work round that for now. So I don't need another product - I could always go back to Page Plus. What I need is to know is if it is a design limitation, a bug or something corrupt within my own APub project that is causing me the inconveinince of having to split the project into two parts. If I can get answers to my questions I can decide how to proceed - which were: If the Programmers/Support staff read this forum – is there an official limit to the number of pages or illustrations that can be handled? What's the biggest project you have tested? To other users, what the largest book you have created?

I've worked with both Imbedded and Linked files - it happens with all Linked illustrations (the pub files sizes I've listed above are reduced significantly) and with them all Embbeded. Most of the illustrations are Affinity Designer file, with some are pngs or jpegs.

Hope it's OK to bump this topic - given the winter break it may not have been seen by Serif. In the meantime I've tried a few other things, to no avail.

I’d like to ask a basic question about the size of book it is possible to produce in Affinity Publisher. If the Programmers/Support staff read this forum – is there an official limit to the number of pages or illustrations that can be handled? What's the biggest project you have tested? To other users, what the largest book you have created? I’m asking this because I have a problem. Currently I’ve created a 680 page book with 500 illustrations. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pinnacle-Studio-Revealed-Jeff-Naylor/dp/0993487122 Because I was on a deadline, rather than struggle with issues within Publisher I decided to split the book up. Previous versions of the book have been created successfully in PagePlus 9 (and earlier), all as a single file. The last version was actually bigger than the current version as I’ve pruned it a bit In AP I’ve ended up with 4 files. The Intro and TOC consists of the start of the book and a TOC that has been created by manually merging the TOCs from Parts 1 and 2. Part 1 is 340 pages with 280 illustrations. The Embedded version of this file is 758Mb. Part 2 is 336 pages with 260 illustrations. The Embedded version of this file 436Mb. The Index is created in Part 1 by exporting the index from part 2 and manually re-sorting the entries. 4 PDFs are exported and merged in Adobe Acrobat DC. Since the book has been published, I’ve spent days trying to create a merged single file from single chapters so I can update the book easily in the future. I’ve moved to the Beta because it has ability to Collect assets and Add pages from File and I was advised it treated Linked files differently. However, whatever I do I end up with the same problems I encountered in version 1.7, which are: Sometimes the larger file I’m adding to just refuses to finish saving or loading – AP hangs at a CPU usage of 15% (30% on my laptop) and after a very long time stops responding. Sometimes I get an error message that tells me the maximum number of files are open and AP can’t proceed. Often when working with a big file, closing it and trying to open another smaller one, even the small file refuses to open until I've restarted AP so it doesn't have a menory overhead - generally once I'm seeing AP using over 3Gb I’ve tried working with files that are all Embedded and files that are all Linked. I’ve tried compiling the sections a chapter at a time. I’ve added more memory so now I’m working with 32Gb. I’ve tried using my laptop instead. I realise that it’s quite possible that the manner in which I first created the publication may have resulted in some corruption – I mostly copied and pasted text from PP9 to AP, a chapter at a time, re-added the illustrations, and re-wrote each chapter as required. Other chapters were created from scratch with text from Word, and screenshots added via Affinity Designer so that they could be labelled. However, I don't really want to start creating it from scratch again if there is an inherent issue with AP. If anyone has any experience of the above issues I’d be very pleased to hear them. I’d also like some advice as to how I can escalate this the Serif, as by moving from PP9 to AP I’ve ended up with a much more unwieldy production process. TIA Jeff