.afdesign not associated on my iPad

[florrpan]

I have a huge issue.

Just bought an iPad pro and wanted to sync files between my PC and iPad through Google drive. That works well enough.. but.
In iPads "files", I can't open .afdesign files. They're greyed out when viewed through the cloud. If I create a .afdesign file on my iPad it's not greyed out, but I can only open it by drag n drop into Designer because "files" doesn't know how to open it.

Hence, files does not get associated with Designer. I can't even pick Designer in Google drive through "open with" because AFDesigner is not listed as a compatible app.

Can I fix this?

[DM1]

10 hours ago, florrpan said:

Can I fix this?

No you can't. We are all waiting on a fix. This effects Photo too.

[Fi73]

I have the same problem.  When will this be fixed?

[DM1]

On 11/20/2019 at 6:29 AM, Fi73 said:

When will this be fixed?

That is like asking 'How long is a piece of string?' 

[Horseflesh]

Yeah, this definitely sucks. 

However I think you can work around it with an an alternative file manager. Get "Documents by Readdle," which is fortunately free. 

• Pour a drink
• Copy your .afdesign file to Google Drive. 
• Open Documents, configure it to access Google Drive (maybe this is done in Files first, can't recall now).
• Copy your .afdesign from Google Drive into Documents' LOCAL file system.
  • If you hit "download" on the "..." menu next to your file in the file list, you can choose Download (this will put it into Documents' "Downloads" folder and from there you can move it to any other folder, etc.)
  • Be careful: there is an iCloud folder for "Documents" too. You don't want it.
• Have some of that drink now
• Your .afdesign file should now be copied from Google Drive into Documents' own filespace on your iPad. 
• Now, open Designer on your iPad. Hit the "+" and "Open from Cloud."
• THEN, use the "Locations" nav link in the upper left to back out to the top level of the file picker. Under Locations, choose "Documents" (the Readdle icon).
  • Yes, we had to pick "Open from Cloud" to navigate to a location in our local file system. Tim Cook says "deal with it."
• Find your .afdesign in Documents' file space, and tap it to open it. 
• Finish that drink and be creative? Or maybe it's time to call it a day now. What were we doing?

This sucks too, of course, but at least it works. 

Honestly this kind of nonsense keeps me from using my nice iOS productivity apps. I own all the Serif apps, but 99.6% of the time I wait until I am at a real computer so I don't have to do this kind of dance. This is objectively not a good system, Apple! 

[DM1]

2 hours ago, Horseflesh said:

Now, open Designer on your iPad. Hit the "+" and "Open from Cloud."

No really, that's all you need. Forget the rest of the steps.

The 'issue' that people are having is when try to open an .afdesign or .afphoto file directly from Files or Documents. The + and Open from Cloud works from any location.

[Horseflesh]

Well that is good news! 

It still sucks that it doesn't work the other way.

 

[Cecil]

No problem opening from my iCloud; however, I wish I could do same from Files, my iPad stored files.  I have to move files from local iPad storage to iCloud.

[Greg Paskal]

I had a similar issue as this original post with opening Affinity Designer files from Google Drive on my iPad Pro. Then it started working great for a few months around January 2020 and then yesterday, 3/5/2020 I could no longer open up any of the documents created with and stored to my Google Drive. This is frustrating since this was finally fixed only to break once again. I hope you can get this working again soon. BTW, I can get it to work fine with iCloud but not with Google Drive.

Sincerely,

Greg,

 

[DM1]

Google drive bug reported already in Photo. Devs working on a fix. Hopefully available soon for a Designer too.

[regedy1]

I've noticed this issue still exists in affinity designer 2.4.1. Is there still not fix for this after all these years?