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I did download the file, and it did show as downloaded locally in Finder/iCloud Drive. And I am on Sonoma 14.1.1 (23B81). Originally upgrade to Sonoma about a month ago, after the 14.1 stable release. However, did did just finally open, after "opening" for around half an hour! Possible iCloud Drive was doing some odd syncing in the background, it was showing an "uploading" indicator (for an entirely separate other file).

I'm experiencing this error as well for a (downloaded locally) file in iCloud Drive, but without any link I'm aware of, and certainly not a large one. Affinity Designer just sits for (presumably) ever at Loading 1 document. I got it on 2.2.1 (I believe), and thought updating to 2.3.0 might fix it, but so far same behavior. I did have to force quit, as quitting any other way raises an "At least one file is currently being opened. Please wait for files to load before quitting the application." dialog. Tried duplicating the file to my home directory, outside of iCloud Drive, but same issue when opening it. About to try a reboot and, when home, opening the same file on iPad to see if any different.

@walt.farrell Did you submit a Feature Request? Would love the ability to do exports relative to the document location, without needing to specify root directory each time (especially annoying how on macOS it defaults to my last Export Persona location, often from a completely different document/client).

Improvements to this would be most lovely! Any news to share? Meanwhile, even just some suggested workflows/guides from others on how they sync work between iPad & Desktop apps would be helpful. @stokerg's explanation above helps a lot and confirms how I _thought_ it worked, but I'm finding myself often confused what versions of my files have been fully synced to Files App/iCloud/Dropbox and can be safely closed in the app, which work I only have in the iPad app's local storage, and which work I have in On My iPad but not any cloud sync services.

One really neat feature of the Affinity Suite is that each of the three programs can open any of the others' files. Try it! Open a Designer document in Photo then vice versa. It's really neat & powerful. The difference though is the interface and tools each program is set up for. Designer is best if you are working with vector artwork and typography. If your cards are mostly line art rather than photographs, I would use this. If you're familiar with Adobe, it's like Illustrator. Photo is a photo editor. Use this if your cards are mostly photographic, if you you need to do fine photo editing. It's similar to Adobe Photoshop. Publisher is for laying out and typesetting longform documents, like books or pamphlets. But it may be useful if you want to set up a single template and store all your cards as spreads in a single document. It's similar to Adobe InDesign. Good luck!

Good call; Save As shaved off about 200 MB, but now I still have a 500MB file with only one 50MB image in it.

@dominik Noted! I'll try to create some more documents and isolate what's causing what I'm seeing, but I definitely have a simple document which is now over 750MB—without save history—with only one large linked PNG on one page, I just know I deleted it and replaced it a couple times as I was messing with its master.

I did some testing on 1.7.0.227 today. Beyond the unexpected definition of "Linked," I'm also noticing that my project filesize only increases if I add, then remove, an image in a Picture Frame. For example, in my case, I just added, then removed (by overriding a master), then re-added the exact same 50MB image multiple times to a page. The filesize of the project increase by about 50MB each time. I expect that, unless I've opted to Save document history, deleting an image from my document would its embedded date from the project file. Additionally, even with Publisher's definition of "linked" files, it should still be possible to preserve space by storing a single instance of an embedded image within the project file if that embedded image is used multiple times across a document.