Affinity Designer multiple pages error message

[Simon Curry]

I am trying to create a new dartboard in a document but getting the error message "Artboards can not be added to a document with master pages or multiple pages". I can't find anything at all that describes these features in Affinity Designer! What did I do? How can I stop this error occurring? Why does the name of the document have an [M] after it in the tab?

 

 

[Old Bruce]

Sounds like you have opened a Publisher file.

44 minutes ago, Simon Curry said:

... Why does the name of the document have an [M] after it in the tab?

The M is for Modified, meaning there is an unsaved edit done to the file.

[Simon Curry]

I know right? Thing is, I don't own publisher (yet). I wonder if some publisher code has worked its way into the current version of design. I imagine there must be some common code to enable personas to work across the products.

[Old Bruce]

2 hours ago, Simon Curry said:

I don't own publisher

Can you copy the elements on the pages and try to paste them into a new designer Document?

The files are meant to be able to be opened in all three applications.

[carl123]

2 hours ago, Simon Curry said:

I know right? Thing is, I don't own publisher (yet). I wonder if some publisher code has worked its way into the current version of design. I imagine there must be some common code to enable personas to work across the products.

Are you saying that you only have Designer and you received that error message when working on your own Designer document?

i.e. You did not receive that document from someone/somewhere else (either in Publisher format or as a Designer document) ?

[jp_nz]

I have this issue arising on a document this morning too. It isn't a publisher file, it was a Designer file.

All I've done today is try to copy and paste an artboard from a different designer file into this one.  Now, I get this error message and I can't add any new artboards.

The copy and paste did not work either, no content appeared. Now I can't add an artboard to this document.

These were both my own documents, and neither has ever gone near Designer.

Are pages or master pages a feature in Designer?  If so, where do I find them in the menu?  I couldn't locate anything in the help file.

Any advice gratefully received.

Designer v1.8.3 (just updated) running on the latest Macbook Pro under OSX Catalina 10.15.4

Thanks

Jason

Edited April 4, 2020 by jp_nz

[walt.farrell]

That happens, if I remember what I reported, when you try to paste an Artboard into a document that has only a canvas.

So, start by using the Artboard Tool to convert the existing canvas to an Artboard, and then you'll be able to paste the other Artboard in. Or, if you're starting with a blank canvas, use File > New from Clipboard instead of File > New.

And yes, Designer can handle a file with pages and Master Pages if you start with a .afpub file. But as you say that's not what happened this time.

[R C-R]

12 hours ago, jp_nz said:

I have this issue arising on a document this morning too. It isn't a publisher file, it was a Designer file.

The error message says your document has multiple pages or master pages. If it does, when you open it in Designer you should see a small strip of buttons in the status bar at the bottom of the workspace window, on the left:

If you see this, then however it happened your document does have pages & the error message is correct.

[jp_nz]

 

On 4/5/2020 at 10:30 AM, walt.farrell said:

That happens, if I remember what I reported, when you try to paste an Artboard into a document that has only a canvas.

So, start by using the Artboard Tool to convert the existing canvas to an Artboard, and then you'll be able to paste the other Artboard in. Or, if you're starting with a blank canvas, use File > New from Clipboard instead of File > New.

And yes, Designer can handle a file with pages and Master Pages if you start with a .afpub file. But as you say that's not what happened this time.

Hi Walt,

Thanks for the tip.  When you say "convert the existing canvas into an Artboard", could you point me to how to do this?  I looked this up in the help file and couldn't find results returned that describe how.

To clarify what's happened here, my original document consisted of artboards with in the document.  All of the documents here are Designer files, I haven't been anywhere near Publisher.  (in my original edit of this post, I had these the wrong way around - apologies for the confusion)

Whats happened is I've tried to transfer an artboard from a different document into this one.

I selected the artboard in the other document and copied (cmd-C)

I moved to the new document and pasted (cmd-v).  Nothing visibly happened.

Subsequently, it has started giving me the 'cannot add artboards to document with master pages or multiple pages'

The page count in the bottom left is showing "1 of 1" and there are no multiple pages to select, but I cannot now create a new artboard.

In my layers list, all the existing content is shown with (artboard) after it in the list (as they were all originally created as artboards in the document before this happened).

If you have any guidance on how to find instructions to convert the canvas back to artboards (as they were), that'd be great. I'd rather not have to recreate the entire document and all its components, and it'd be good to understand how this happened for when it happens next time I try and copy / paste an artboard from one designer doc to another.

JP

 

 

On 4/5/2020 at 10:31 PM, R C-R said:

The error message says your document has multiple pages or master pages. If it does, when you open it in Designer you should see a small strip of buttons in the status bar at the bottom of the workspace window, on the left:

If you see this, then however it happened your document does have pages & the error message is correct.

Well, this is what's at the bottom of my document so it would appear not, yet I'm still getting the error message on that document.  My question is not whether the error message is correct, but how to fix the problem and get back to being able to edit the artboards that were in my document before Designer made the change.

Probably also a comment that when one types 'pages' into the Designer help file, it returns absolutely nothing in the search results to indicate how to find out about pages, how to use them or how to convert them back to artboards - it just takes you to the 'about artboards' files which doesn't seem all that helpful.

 

 

Edited April 8, 2020 by jp_nz

[walt.farrell]

35 minutes ago, jp_nz said:

To clarify what's happened here, my original document consisted of artboards with in the document.  All of the documents here are Publisher files, I haven't been anywhere near Designer.

I have to say that if you haven't used Designer, it's unlikely your document had Artboards in it. Did you mean Pages?

It can be done, if you use File > New from the Designer Persona of Publisher, and know exactly what options to specify on the dialog.  But it seems unlikely you did that.

If you were in Designer, with a document that had a canvas, you could click on the canvas with the Artboard Tool to convert it into an Artboard.

That would not work in Publisher except for a document with no Master pages and only one document page.

[walt.farrell]

46 minutes ago, jp_nz said:

My question is not whether the error message is correct, but how to fix the problem and get back to being able to edit the artboards that were in my document before Designer made the change.

I'm sorry, but this has become confusing. Could you create your own topic, jp, so we don't get your symptoms and descriptions confused with those from the OP, @Simon Curry?

One of you is using Designer, and the other Publisher, I think, and I'm finding it very confusing trying to keep the two conversations in one topic straight.

[jp_nz]

18 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I'm sorry, but this has become confusing. Could you create your own topic, jp, so we don't get your symptoms and descriptions confused with those from the OP, @Simon Curry?

One of you is using Designer, and the other Publisher, I think, and I'm finding it very confusing trying to keep the two conversations in one topic straight.

No problem Walt, will do.  Sorry, that was my error in the original post getting confused between Publisher and Designer. I meant I'm working in Affinity Designer, not Publisher and not vice versa!

Edited April 8, 2020 by jp_nz

[jp_nz]

Actually, don't worry. It was quicker and easier in the end to create a new document and copy the content across in the end, than continue to try and figure it out.

If anyone from Affinity is monitoring this, it would be great if the help files for Designer had some content (or better structured, when you search if it's there and I'm not finding it) on how master pages and pages work in Designer, and how to get over this error message of not being able to create artboards if a document has master pages or multiple pages.

Thanks for your help Walt.

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, jp_nz said:

how to get over this error message of not being able to create artboards if a document has master pages or multiple pages.

You can't get past that message. Documents are not allowed to have an Artboard if they have either a Master Page or more than one document page.

You just hit a bug that corrupted your file, possibly by trying to paste or drag an Artboard onto a Designer document that had a canvas.

[R C-R]

48 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

You just hit a bug that corrupted your file, possibly by trying to paste or drag an Artboard onto a Designer document that had a canvas.

I can't find a way to duplicate this in APub 1.8.3 for Macs. No matter what I try, if I open in APub a document that has just a single page & no Master & then drag or paste an af.design file with or without artboards into it, it either just adds the af.design file as another artboard to the single page that may already have artboards in it, or I get a message asking if I want to convert artboards to spreads, like this:

It is the same message I get if I open a document that has artboard(s) but no pages in APub.

So I suspect it is the converting to spreads option that causes the irreversible change from an artboard to page based document. That is not of itself a bug, but the message could be a lot clearer about the consequences of converting to spreads.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

if I open in APub a document that has just a single page & no Master & then drag or paste an af.design file with or without artboards into it,

I've done it in Designer. It involves having a canvas, and pasting in an Artboard. Haven't tried dragging an Artboard in, but that might fail, too. (Or not )

Just tried it in Publisher. Start with a document with no Master page, 1 document page. Paste in an Artboard (not a .afdesign file).

For me, Publisher crashed immediately. (And the crash is repeatable.)

Edit: With 2 document pages, the Paste doesn't crash Publisher. I get either:

1. An empty (Image) layer if the Artboard I copied was empty; or
2. The content of the Artboard (all the layers), pasted as new layers on the document page, if the Artboard was not empty.

At least, with Publisher, I can't recreate the corrupted document issue

[walt.farrell]

And, to followup, if you create a new document in Photo, and paste in the copied Artboard (with content), nothing seems to paste in (Layers panel remains empty). And after that no new layers or objects can be created in the document.

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I've done it in Designer. It involves having a canvas, and pasting in an Artboard.

I tried a couple of variations on this:

1. I pasted an artboard created in one AD document into a new empty one (so no canvas to begin with). It looked like nothing happened (other than the History panel showed "Paste" & got a selection box in the workspace window), but as soon as I used the Move tool to move the selection box, the pasted artboard appeared, both in the workspace window & in the Layers panel.
2. I did the same thing, but starting with an AD document that had a single rectangle on its canvas (but no artboard). This worked the same way -- the pasted artboard did not appear until I moved its selection box. When I did that, I ended up with an artboard + a layer below it (but not a child of it) with the rectangle in it.

For both versions, I could use File > Edit in Publisher to open the document in APub & in its Designer Persona, I could add new artboards without any errors or other issues.

However, if I omitted the step of moving the artboard (so only the artboard's selection box but not its contents was showing in the workspace window & it was not appearing in the Layers panel), using File > Edit in Publisher immediately (& repeatably) crashed APub.

So my conclusion is that the artboard paste in AD does work, but without the move step the document is left in some phantom state that APub can't handle.

If you try this on your Windows PC do you see the same thing?