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Request: better handling of imported styles when copying and pasting


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Issue:

In my Affinity Publisher documents, I tend to use the same text styles. When copying and pasting text between the documents, the styles get duplicated with a number added at the end. This happens even if the styles are identical. Example:

284994767_ScreenShot2019-11-27at11_33_41.jpg.3fea4c86fd2e9de6dd0f5049b8941444.jpg

^ These are all the same style which have been duplicated when copy & pasting between documents. 

Solution:

When copying and pasting between a document, Affinity should ask the user how handle duplicate styles rather than just numbering them.

 

Here is an example of how it could work:

temp.jpg.1c413316c726787ce765f69a5fc4a3a3.jpg

This dialogue box would pop up whenever copying and pasting text in situations where Affinity would currently just duplicate the style.
This dialogue box would be optional, activated first via an option in preferences, so users who like the current handling of style can chose not to activate the option. 

Merge Styles - Keep incoming definition This option will cause the two styles to be merged. All values will follow the source document. 

Merge Styles - Keep local definition This option will cause the two styles to be merged. All values will follow the local document. 

Create new style - This will create a new style (which is how Affinity currently handles it by duplicating the style and adding a number to the name).

Additional options:

Clear Overrides - Any differences between the local and incoming style will be discarded. 

Keep Overrides - Any differences between the local and incoming style will be kept as overrides. 

Save Overrides as character style - The differences can be saved as a character style. 

Example:

I have  "Document A" which has  text that has a style called "English translation". This is just Helvetica, bold text 12pt. 

I copy and paste this text into "Document B" that already has a style  called "English translation". If I select "Merge Styles/incoming" then the style from Document A will be used. If I click clear overrides, then any differences between the text in document A&B will be lost. 

 

Who would this be useful for:

This would be useful for users who regularly copy and paste text between Publisher documents. 

 

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  • 5 months later...

This has, I think, to a large extent been answered in v 1.8, but only when importing from another Publisher document. I regularly import text from MS Word documents (usually by means of Copy/Paste) and this tends to result in all the styles from the Word document getting added to the already existing styles in the Publisher document, which I generally do not want, especially when I have taken a lot of care with the styles in the Word document.

When importing from another Publisher document, there is the "Imported Text Styles" feature, which allows the user to decide how individual styles should be handled on import: added to the existing inventory, replaced by a specified existing style, etc.

It would be very useful to have the "Imported Text Styles" feature appear when importing from Word (or similar) documents.

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  • 4 months later...
On 5/15/2020 at 1:44 PM, Andrew Crompton said:

This has, I think, to a large extent been answered in v 1.8, but only when importing from another Publisher document. I regularly import text from MS Word documents (usually by means of Copy/Paste) and this tends to result in all the styles from the Word document getting added to the already existing styles in the Publisher document, which I generally do not want, especially when I have taken a lot of care with the styles in the Word document.

I don’t think it has been answered in 1.8 at all.

I copy and paste text between my Publisher documents all the time, and even though the text has identical formatting, I still end up with "Title 1" "Title 2"..... "Title 15" 

I've just spent 40 minutes manually merging all the styles sheets into one. Most annoying! 

 

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4 hours ago, big smile said:

I copy and paste text between my Publisher documents all the time, and even though the text has identical formatting, I still end up with "Title 1" "Title 2"..... "Title 15" 

I've just spent 40 minutes manually merging all the styles sheets into one. Most annoying! 

Yep. This is one of those things that should not be as hard as it is. I can sympathize if Serif wants to change it but just haven't got to it yet, given the many things the users and they themselves want to accomplish. However, I do hope the current situation is not the intended end goal on this matter.

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18 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

Yep. This is one of those things that should not be as hard as it is. I can sympathize if Serif wants to change it but just haven't got to it yet, ...

This behavior wouldn't need changing if anyone at Serif would have thought through the issue when being developed and made the feature correct in the first place. 

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In the absence of a proper solution I have been using the following workaround when copying and pasting from Word:

  1. In addition to my target Publisher document, I create a second, empty Publisher document and delete all the style definitions.
  2. I import into this second document the styles from my target Publisher document.
  3. Then I copy & paste my text from Word, having made sure in advance that all the style-names match up. It's not important that the style-definitions match.
  4. Repeat Step 2. At this point I get the "Imported Text  Styles" dialog and replace all the conflicting style-definitions with those from the target document. 
  5. Finally I copy & paste from my second Publisher document into the target Publisher document. There should be no style conflicts and no new styles (like Title 1) should get created: mostly that works.

Is this tedious? Of course. But it's a lot less tedious than the manual merge big smile had to do. (If you still lived up to your name after spending 40 mins on that, big smile, then hats off to you!)

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  • 8 months later...
On 6/16/2021 at 9:19 AM, Dom159 said:

Did anything ever come of this?  I am still getting this behaviour, but only with one style.  The styles are identical.

To answer your first question, no, so far, the issue as raised in this feature request still remains.

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  • 7 months later...
1 hour ago, captain_slocum said:

20 -30 time a day

Ouch. My sympathies to you. I fortunately have to go through the rough process far less, but it is sure annoying when I do.

I don't consider this a deal-breaker, because it is not stopping any and result, but I do consider this to be one of Publisher's rough edges.

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21 hours ago, captain_slocum said:

Can I add my request for this as well. I spend a lot of time deleting the unwanted text styles imported every time I paste from a Word doc - about 20 -30 time a day!

I waste a lot of time on deleting unwanted styes, and I am not even pasting from Word. I just paste between Affinity Designer documents!

I can understand Word confusing Affinity, but why does it get confused with it's own Affinity style sheets? Surely it should know that if text is being pasted and it has the same style as the target document, then it must be the same style!

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28 minutes ago, big smile said:

Surely it should know that if text is being pasted and it has the same style as the target document, then it must be the same style!

Does it simply have the same text style name? Or does it also have exactly the same definition?

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
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3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Does it simply have the same text style name? Or does it also have exactly the same definition?

The style name should be all that matters. If I paste text from one document to another, I expect the styles to align on name alone, whether or not the exact definitions are different between them.

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4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Does it simply have the same text style name? Or does it also have exactly the same definition?

Everything is the same. To be fair, it's not as bad as it was back in 2019. But it still happens way more than it should.

And I still have "clean up" sessions where I have to go back and manually merge the styles.

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  • 5 months later...

Totally agree with all of the above. In Publisher 1.10.5 is so confused it changes the style definition. Yesterday para style Body left the font/trait as was so you could import text in several fonts and they would be retained but para spacing, colour etc would change to that required. Today para style Body changes all the fonts to one defined in a style it created from pasted word text. If i try to correct or delete, all my previous use of Body changes to Bold.

Doubt if Serif will do anything about it though, still waiting on response to a Search&Replace issue posted in October 2020

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