Loquos

This.
I've been struggling with copy and pasting from a Google Spreadsheet. Now that I have 50+ cells to pull from, the individual copy & paste wasn't going to cut it, so I dug around on the forums. I found that downloading the Google Spreadsheet as an XLSX file, then opening it in Libre Office (because that's what I have) and then copy & pasting from there seems to stop the aggravating "all in one cell" issue I was having with Google Spreadsheet. Though this was never a problem in ID, so I'm guessing it's an issue on the AP side?

That worked. Thanks so much!

After poking around thoroughly in Publisher, I did not see one feature that I find incredibly handy in ID - creating 'books'. I saw another thread where someone suggested using Publisher's 'Sections' as a way to handle longer documents, though I'm not sure this is the way to go and keep the program running smoothly.
ID handles books by creating a 'container' into which you can add or remove other ID files as 'sections' - allowing you to rearrange each as needed, add/remove pages inside each and automatically updating page numbers as you shift things around. You can even tell the 'book' that all section's styles should be children of 1 master style, allowing you to only have to update a style once to populate it across all sections.
There is a longish publication I work on each year that I find easiest to wrangle by creating it as a 'book' instead of a 100+ page file. I'm not 100% sure I'd want to attempt this same publication in Publisher without some way to better manage these sections.
I'm not saying Affinity should recreate what Adobe has done - I am suggesting they could add this feature and have it work even better than Adobe's does. :-)
 

Oh, I forgot to mention, the TOC was fine before the weird paragraph break thing happened and quitting the app to restart it. 

Sorry for the delay in the file share. I've made a copy of the file and removed the majority of the material minus the content that generates the TOC to attach it here without being quite so bulky.

I tried using the previous issue to refresh the TOC and get the same odd results, but they were fine.
British Society - Spotlight 133 TEST.afpub

Feature request.
I notice with the Table tool, Publisher can sort things in ascending or descending order, but doesn't give you the option to manually click and drag rows to reorder them. This is a handy feature in Adobe InDesign that I would love to see in Publisher as well. Currently, it appears the only way to manually change the order after the text is placed is to add extra rows, then copy and paste the text into the correct order.

As this was the first time I'd messed with either Index or Table of Contents, I don't know if anything I did was unusual or not.
This is a file that was originally built out a few years ago. I simply 'save as' and create the next year's file from the previous. Not sure if that could cause anything odd?
I did the Table of Contents first. In fact, I deleted the old frame that was there and completely redid it - styling and everything.
Another day, I created the Index. This is a new element for this file. Previous versions did not have an Index. It took me a few tries to understand how to build it out. In fact, I'm sure I deleted the entire original frame and started over at one point.
Everything has always been in the same file, and I didn't copy any of the textual elements from any other file.
If I recall anything else, I'll come back and make an update.

Any chance there will be a Caption feature in Publisher? Preferably one that works better than InDesign does!
Essentially, you'd set up a paragraph style for photo captions, then right click an image and tell it to insert the caption (either static or live).
Even more awesome would be if there was a better way to automatically say how it should line up (with the bottom edge of the caption level with the bottom edge of the photo, etc.) and to expand (up/down or sideways) to allow for the amount of text in the caption.
Attaching IDs current settings for this feature, though only for clarification on what I'm talking about. :-)

Readers of this thread may be interested to try the first beta implementation of Data Merge in the latest Affinity Publisher Beta
You can find Affinity Publisher Customer Beta 1.9.0.796 for macOS HERE and for Windows HERE
If you are coming to this post late the latest customer beta can be found in the last post in the relevant one of these announcement threads on macOS or Windows

Hi Loquos,
Go to  macOS System Preferences, Keyboard, Text section (on top), in the Spelling dropdown make sure British English appear there. If not, go to the end of that list and select Set Up.... Tick British English then press the Done button. Restart Publisher and check the Languages available again.

Haha! I'm sure he'd give it for free... but it's hand-coded and was built specifically to my needs. You'd have to know the coding he used (don't ask me, I don't know!) and how to change it to suit your needs.
However, maybe there's a niche market for this? For a small fee, specific code to meet your specific needs? :-) If you're dead serious, I'll ask him if he's interested in a side job.

Any chance there will be a Caption feature in Publisher? Preferably one that works better than InDesign does!
Essentially, you'd set up a paragraph style for photo captions, then right click an image and tell it to insert the caption (either static or live).
Even more awesome would be if there was a better way to automatically say how it should line up (with the bottom edge of the caption level with the bottom edge of the photo, etc.) and to expand (up/down or sideways) to allow for the amount of text in the caption.
Attaching IDs current settings for this feature, though only for clarification on what I'm talking about. :-)

Well then, let's make Publisher better than ID? :-D 
I would think, just like a search and replace, or the TOC, you could tell the program 'search for all instances of X and return the page number this entry occurs on'. You could do this for each word you need to be indexed but you wouldn't have to search for each them manually and stop to manually insert a marker each time. You'd simply input the desired word in the appropriate field when building the index, and the program inserts the page number(s).
This is what I mean by 'auto index' - as opposed to the highly manually 'search, stop, insert index tag, search, stop, insert index tag' of the current workflow, which I think would grow tedious quickly. Like GREP or even Search & Replace, you could specify that words only with a specific format should be considered to tag for indexing.

Are there any plans to create an auto-index feature? I swear ID can do this - but all I see in the Publisher Beta is the tedious 'insert index marker' by hand, page by page, for each and every topic you want to index. Surely when you're laying out a reference book or other large publication, there's a more automated way to do this then searching for each instance of a word and then inserting a marker?
Or, like Table of Contents, could there be a way to have words with special formatting automatically flagged to be included in the index?
As it is, indexing currently feels incredibly clunky and incomplete. I do realize this is still in Beta though, so curiosity prompts me to ask if polishing up the index feature is something slated for future releases?

On a positive note, I found the TOC very easy to set up, format, and create - quickly and effectively. Great job!

Columns in text boxes is good, but option to Span columns, so that a title can span the 2 columns of text it's above, without having to make a separate text box for the title please.

When setting up a layout grid in my Master pages, it's super handy to be able to say "Make my margins this size, and within the remaining working space, separate into X columns with a gutter of Y". I've attached the setup and window in InDesign as an example (orange) to compare to Publisher (purple).
In Publisher, it's currently only possible to set margins - everything else I have to set up manually with the Guide Manager. Any chance the ability to set columns & gutters as part of the margins settings will be future feature?

Hi begem0t,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
This is an old thread from 2014. You can already place objects on the pasteboard area for both regular documents (go to menu View ▸ View Mode and uncheck Clip to Canvas if it's not already unchecked) and artboard based documents (just drag the objects to the pasteboard area).

After poking around thoroughly in Publisher, I did not see one feature that I find incredibly handy in ID - creating 'books'. I saw another thread where someone suggested using Publisher's 'Sections' as a way to handle longer documents, though I'm not sure this is the way to go and keep the program running smoothly.
ID handles books by creating a 'container' into which you can add or remove other ID files as 'sections' - allowing you to rearrange each as needed, add/remove pages inside each and automatically updating page numbers as you shift things around. You can even tell the 'book' that all section's styles should be children of 1 master style, allowing you to only have to update a style once to populate it across all sections.
There is a longish publication I work on each year that I find easiest to wrangle by creating it as a 'book' instead of a 100+ page file. I'm not 100% sure I'd want to attempt this same publication in Publisher without some way to better manage these sections.
I'm not saying Affinity should recreate what Adobe has done - I am suggesting they could add this feature and have it work even better than Adobe's does. :-)
 

Any chance there will be a Caption feature in Publisher? Preferably one that works better than InDesign does!
Essentially, you'd set up a paragraph style for photo captions, then right click an image and tell it to insert the caption (either static or live).
Even more awesome would be if there was a better way to automatically say how it should line up (with the bottom edge of the caption level with the bottom edge of the photo, etc.) and to expand (up/down or sideways) to allow for the amount of text in the caption.
Attaching IDs current settings for this feature, though only for clarification on what I'm talking about. :-)

Hi Loquos,

As Seneca has mentioned this is a known issue that will be fixed in the next beta! Unfortunately there is no way in  1.7.0.6 to get these open. 
 

Now that I come to think that, you must be right.
Clearly too used to play with web publishing. If I remember correctly, Word has that functionality, but that's another thing.
Still, I still think it would be a useful feature to have - couldn't Affinity Publisher be the first designer program to have it?

Just an FYI, I don't know any design program that has that feature. It's a coding thing, CSS/HTML, not a design thing. Certainly not offered by InDesign. Definitely not in something more basic like Excel.
You can select a column and tell it how wide to be. When you adjust other columns, it won't affect the size of the column you've specified a width for. So simply set each of those dummy columns to your preferred width, and you're good to go.

The lines of a table won't determine the width between your cells. You could make them 50 points thick and they would just run into and cover up the content in your cells. Consider them as decoration, not an element that adjust space between cells.
If you must have cells with a fill, but you want clear space between those cells, the best way to do that is with inserting dummy cells with no fill or stroke.
Your only other option would be to ditch the table entirely and grid out the whole thing, making individual boxes with text, and then adjust the spacing between them as it suits you - not as quick to go an edit should the content of your 'cells' change.

In the Paragraph Styles panel under Paragraph/Spacing you can set the Alignment to the following:
Left Center Right Justify Last Line Left Justify Last Line Center Justify Last Line Right Justify All It would be nice to see the following:
Away from Spine Toward Spine It is needed (for me) in instances where i am working with headers/footers primarily, and for other layouts when putting together books for art exhibitions etc.

In playing around in recreating a template I currently use in InDesign, I noticed there's no option to set up Text Styles to align the text towards/away from the spine. This would be a hugely helpful for setting layout for large multi-page documents!

After poking around thoroughly in Publisher, I did not see one feature that I find incredibly handy in ID - creating 'books'. I saw another thread where someone suggested using Publisher's 'Sections' as a way to handle longer documents, though I'm not sure this is the way to go and keep the program running smoothly.
ID handles books by creating a 'container' into which you can add or remove other ID files as 'sections' - allowing you to rearrange each as needed, add/remove pages inside each and automatically updating page numbers as you shift things around. You can even tell the 'book' that all section's styles should be children of 1 master style, allowing you to only have to update a style once to populate it across all sections.
There is a longish publication I work on each year that I find easiest to wrangle by creating it as a 'book' instead of a 100+ page file. I'm not 100% sure I'd want to attempt this same publication in Publisher without some way to better manage these sections.
I'm not saying Affinity should recreate what Adobe has done - I am suggesting they could add this feature and have it work even better than Adobe's does. :-)