Fordy

Updated Affinity Photo to 2.4.2; Application updated OK. However, both Designer and Publisher fail to update. The update downloads ok but when I click on the Install and Restart button, nothing happens. Relaunching the app returns to v2.4.0. M1 Mac Mini, running Sonoma 14.3.1

Pauls, I have uploaded two files. The 83MB file is the Publisher file with linked content - after it had updated all the links. The file started out at about 30MB after the links were first created and then grew to 83MB after the links were updated (no other changes to content). As a comparison, once the 83MB file had been loaded (took 28 minutes) I went through and deleted all the linked PDF content and the file returned to about 20MB and loaded normally. I then embedded the same PDF files in the document and got a file of about 32MB. I have since updated the embedded files and it still sits at 33MB - much smaller than the file with the linked content. The second file is the largest of the PDF files that were linked - under 1MB and 51 pages long. I hope that helps diagnose the issue.

I am making this a new topic as it's a very serious issue which I originally reported as a problem with saving files (it's not). After much investigation, it seems that there is a problem updating linked files. My case is reasonably extreme; I have a 140-page document, 80 pages of which are links to external PDF files. I can create the links fine but, as soon as the external PDF files are updated all hell breaks loose in Publisher. It doesn't matter if the links are updated automatically at opening, or manually using the Resource Manager - the update takes an eternity and the resulting disk file grows exponentially. It is basically unusable in a production environment. I have now recreated the file using exactly the same PDFs, but embedded. The file is only 32MB in size (the file with linked PDFs grew to be 82MB) and I can use the "Replace" function in the Resource Manager to update the PDFs whenever they change. The process works properly, time to update is short, and the file size is smaller. The only assumption I can make is that the process of updating linked files in Affinity Publisher is seriously broken. Unfortunately, I cannot provide the file as it contains confidential information.

After much investigation, it seems that there is a problem updating linked files. My case is reasonably extreme; I have a 140-page document, 80 pages of which are links to external PDF files. I can create the links fine but, as soon as the external PDF files are updated all hell breaks loose in Publisher. It doesn't matter if the links are updated automatically at opening, or manually using the Resource Manager - the update takes an eternity and the resulting disk file grows exponentially. It is basically unusable in a production environment. I have now recreated the file using exactly the same PDFs, but embedded. The file is only 32MB in size (the linked file grew to be 82MB) and I can use the "Replace" function in the Resource Manager to update the PDFs whenever they change. The process works properly, time to update is short and the file size is smaller. The only assumption I can make is that the process of updating linked files is seriously broken.

Yes, I am not worried about the file size on its own - but the 15 minute+ open time is a big issue. Also, the use of "Save As" keeps the file size under control whereas "Save" doesn't. It rather suggests that "Save" includes a lot of crud in the file which slows opening and increases file size. The Affinity Publisher process has been using 90%+ CPU trying to open this file for more than 15 minutes now. I recreated another file that has the same content, was built using the "Save As" function and is only 8MB (one-tenth the size) and opens in a flash. Something is seriously wrong with the Save function.

I recently had an Affinity Publisher file that took about 15 minutes to open with the CPU at nearly 100%. The file size was about 80Mb (for a 140 page document). I have just recreated the same document from scratch and the file size is currently 8Mb (about 1/10th the size). What seems to happen is that as the file is edited, it grows in size with each 'Save'. However, if a “Save As…” is performed on the same identical file, the size is reduced considerably. I am NOT saving history with the file and all placed objects are linked, not embedded. So starting from scratch, I edited and saved the new file until it grew to 20Mb in size. I then did a ‘Save As’ on the file and it immediately reduced to 5Mb. I continued to ‘Save As’ until the file had grown to 8Mb. It is now in the same state as the 80Mb file which took 15 minutes to load. What is going on? (Windows 10 x64, Affinity Publisher 1.7.2.471)

When exporting a PDF file with a table of contents, only the actual numbers in the ToC are hyperlinked (rather than the whole ToC text entry). This is not the expected behaviour - the whole of the text entry in the ToC should be a hyperlink.

@Old Bruce Thanks for that; I had totally missed the fact that the actual numbers were hyperlinked. As you say, a very weird omission. I will submit that as a bug.

@walt.farrell Thanks, yes, I thought it should do it automatically. I am on Windows 10 and, yes, the "Include Hyperlinks" on the PDF export is checked. The hyperlinks that I explicitly make in Publisher are included in the PDF and work correctly. However, the ToC (Generated by Publisher) looks fine but does not include any links. I can add the links manually to the ToC but, if I do this then I have to re-add every time I update the ToC. Sorry, I can't send you the files as they contain confidential content - if I can't solve the problem, I might generate a special file to demonstrate the issue.

I can't seem to get Publisher's Table of Contents to produce hyperlinks in a PDF export. Other manually entered hyperlinks work fine in the same PDF file, just not the ToC. Surely I don't have to manually create all the hyperlinks myself? I am on Windows 10. TIA.

Inserted photo, went to use the rescale slider (pops up below picture frame) and publisher vanished totally from the screen. No error messages, just totally gone. Restarted Publisher and recovered to last autosaved state, so all good and only a little lost work. As a veteran InDesign user, I like what I am seeing with Affinity Publisher. Sure there are a few bells and whistles missing yet, but I like the clean interface and was quickly able to produce a well laid out publication using most of the features I regularly use in InDesign. One thing I would miss at the moment is the ID "book" feature. I hope it is on the list for the future, though I accept that it is an advanced feature that not many would use. Keep up the good work, it's looking really good.