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I've been trying to set up an automatic Table of Contents in my book, and it has caused me to crash 3 or 4 times within a short period. I don't know if my book is simply too big (13 documents, totalling 295 pages), but performance tanks when it has to re-index the ToC and sometimes it crashes.

Greetings: First as a disclaimer, let me state that I am very supportive of your business. I've been buying your products (even some I've not needed) to support your competition with Adobe. I want to see you succeed. With that said, Publisher 2's functionality surrounding Books (I feature I requested and was very excited to see) was not ready to be released. It is the most unstable software I've used since Windows 3.1. I've chased down some bugs and hope this will help you fix your product. My Hardware & Project: Affinity Publisher v2.0.0; macOS Ventura 13.1; Mac mini M1, 2000. I am working with a Publisher book that has 16 chapter-files. The book is just under 100 pages in trade (6" x9") format and is rich in illustrations and tables. It includes a Table of Contents and will contain an Index when that functionality becomes workable. Terminology: "Crash" means that a program unexpectedly closes. "Hang" means that a program becomes unresponsive, cannot self-terminate, and must be terminated by the operating system (i.e. "Force Quit"). By profession, I am a software engineer. I'm attaching several videos that were recorded in chronological order. This behavior is repeatable. Affinity-01 -- I open the book-file. I open the chapter-file that contains the Table of Contents. I close the chapter file that contains the Table of Contents. The program hangs. Affinity-02 -- I open the book-file. I update the numbering in all chapter-files of the book. I open the chapter-file that contains the Table of Contents. The program crashes. Affinity-03 -- I do not open the book-file. I open the chapter-file that contains the Table of Contents. The program crashes. Affinity-04 -- I open the book-file. I open the chapter-file that contains the Table of Contents. This demonstrates that the file can be opened from within the book (but not from without the book) without it crashing. I then update the Table of Contents. I'm then able to save and close the chapter-file without the program hanging. Summary: I believe instability in the Book features of Publisher 2 are strongly related to the handling of the Table of Contents. When I work on chapter-files with the book-file closed, I do not experience these problems. With the book-file open, I experience frequent problems with the chapter-files. Additional Observations: II'm transitioning this product from InDesign with new files. While I'm copying elements from IDML files, the work started with a new Affinity Pub 2 template. I got as far as brining in all the material, formatting it, and building the table of contents. I am unable to build the Index. After creating the index markers of three of the chapter-files, I attempted to create the index. Not only did this result in crashes as I attempted to build the index multiple times, but the index markers from those three saved chapter-files have been removed. I'm concerned that the file structure's integrity may have been damaged as Publisher tried to build the index. As you work this problem, I'd appreciate being kept updated. Again, I wish your company continued success. Best Regards, Mark Affinity-01.mov Affinity-02.mov Affinity-03.mov Screen Recording 2022-12-20 at 09.39.44.mov