Keyboard shortcut for Text / Interactive / Insert Anchor doesn't work

[Helmar]

Title says it all. As an anchor is set within the text tool, a shortcut, although not allocated, would be overridden by a special character, rendering the creation of the anchor non-operational. Result: you have to insert it via the menu.

[walt.farrell]

You might need to press Esc (Escape) to exit from text editing mode, or move the mouse cursor over the edge of the text frame until you get the Move cursor. But it might also depend on the shortcut you're trying to use.

On Windows, for example, the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+A (when assigned to Text > Interactive > Insert Anchor) works whether one is still in editing mode or not. What shortcut do you have assigned?

[Helmar]

That doesn't work, unfortunately, because the moment I press ESC, the "Text / Interactive / Insert Anchor" is greyed out. It only works with the text tool enabled. I tried numerous shortcuts, but in the text tool they pull up characters rather than "activating" a menu item.

[walt.farrell]

10 minutes ago, Helmar said:

That doesn't work, unfortunately, because the moment I press ESC, the "Text / Interactive / Insert Anchor" is greyed out. It only works with the text tool enabled. I tried numerous shortcuts, but in the text tool they pull up characters rather than "activating" a menu item.

How about if you leave the text cursor active, but move the mouse cursor over the frame to get the Move cursor. Is the menu still disabled? Did you try the Mac equivalent of Ctrl+Alt+A (Cmd+Opt+A, perhaps)?

[Old Bruce]

I am on Mac here and the only way I can get a shortcut assigned (which will actually work) to Insert Anchor is to NOT use the option/alt key in the shortcut. Using Command + Shift (and or Control) works but the thing breaks and inserts the option character for which ever Alpha Numeric I have assigned to the shortcut.

[Helmar]

2 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

I am on Mac here and the only way I can get a shortcut assigned (which will actually work) to Insert Anchor is to NOT use the option/alt key in the shortcut. Using Command + Shift (and or Control) works but the thing breaks and inserts the option character for which ever Alpha Numeric I have assigned to the shortcut.

Thanks, Bruce, that did the trick. I now have it on Shift-Cmd-Ä, and that indeed triggers the function. Appreciate the help!

[Helmar]

Slightly off-topic, but I am editing an almost 700 pages book of mine in AFP, and it's such a charm to do so. With some options I wish it would work like InDesign, ie an anchor creation should create and place a text-frame according to a predefined position, but other than that it's plain awesome!

[Helmar]

Another question: What is the point of adding an anchor, if the connected frame doesn't move with the text? Or did I miss anything?

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, Helmar said:

Another question: What is the point of adding an anchor, if the connected frame doesn't move with the text? Or did I miss anything?

I'm not sure what you mean by "the connected frame" in this context. Can you provide an example?

[Seneca]

32 minutes ago, Helmar said:

What is the point of adding an anchor, if the connected frame doesn't move with the text?

I think you mean Pin. 

Well it works for me. Please check the Pinning options in the Pinning Panel.

[Helmar]

Just now, walt.farrell said:

I'm not sure what you mean by "the connected frame" in this context. Can you provide an example?

Let me ask first: What's an anchor for? An anchor (in InDesign) can point to a text or graphic frame. This frame has been positioned relative to the spine, the page edge or other coordinates. When you create an anchor linked to a frame, this frame moves with the anchor, so if the anchor moves 4 lines down, so does the frame. I know there's "pinning". Have to figure out what that does... 🙂

[Helmar]

2 minutes ago, Seneca said:

I think you mean Pin. 

Well it works for me. Please check the Pinning options in the Pin Panel.

Thanks, Seneca! Any hints you'd like to give?

[Helmar]

8 minutes ago, Seneca said:

I think you mean Pin. 

Well it works for me. Please check the Pinning options in the Pin Panel.

Figured it out. Thank you for the pointer - much appreciated! 🙂 This baby is getting better and better! 🙂 

Question: can one "style" the pin? Is there an option to save pin settings? Or does  one have to do it manually for each anchored frame?

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, Helmar said:

Let me ask first: What's an anchor for? An anchor (in InDesign) can point to a text or graphic frame. This frame has been positioned relative to the spine, the page edge or other coordinates. When you create an anchor linked to a frame, this frame moves with the anchor, so if the anchor moves 4 lines down, so does the frame. I know there's "pinning". Have to figure out what that does... 🙂

Anchors don't point to anything. They give you a way to reference something. So, you might have a 5 page chunk of text, in linked text frames, and you want to refer to something that is on page 3. You find the text you want to refer to, and insert an anchor.

Then, somewhere else, you might have text that says "See <whatever>" or "See <whatever> on page 3". In the first case, you would make <whatever> (or See <whatever>) a hyperlink to the anchor. No matter where the anchored text moves, clicking on <whatever> will take you there. You might have inserted 10 more pages before it, so now it's on page 13. Doesn't matter.

The second one ("on page 3") is harder to deal with. For that one, you need two more text frames. You create two small frames, and link them. Then,

1. You pin the first new frame inline after "See <whatever> on page " and in that frame you insert the field "next frame page number".
2. You pin the second new frame to the point where you placed the anchor. You do not need anything in this frame.

If the anchored point moves to a different page, the page reference at the "See" point automatically changes.

[Seneca]

4 minutes ago, Helmar said:

Question: can one "style" the pin? Is there an option to save pin settings?

Unfortunately, Publisher doesn't have an equivalent to Object Styles in inDesign.

I, and a score of others have asked for that but, frankly, there are more important things missing from Publisher (Footnotes for example) that this can wait a little.

[Helmar]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Anchors don't point to anything.

@walt.farrellThen I got confused. Mixed up anchors with pinning. Figured out pinning, Realised that I can move the pin from the position AFP placed it to my preferred position. Awesome. Sorted.

@Seneca Thank you for clarifying. Object Styles would be awesome, but footnotes are definitely more important. 

I'll chug along in the meantime. Thamks for all your help - much appreciated.

[Old Bruce]

5 minutes ago, Helmar said:

footnotes are definitely more important. 

I agree.

[Gabe]

Insert anchor seems to work fine for me. 

[Helmar]

Thanks, @Gabe. I followed Bruce's advice, which worked for me. Interesting that your shortcut works using the Option key. It didn't work for me.

Here's something else for you to look at. AFP is rather quirky (read: unreliable) when it comes to pinned frames. There seems to be no logic behind the placing of the pin. I had times when AFP places a pin into a locked pinned frame. And sometimes placed frames are placed locked, and they cannot be unlocked at all, not even deleted. Happy hunting...

Cheers,

Helmar

[Seneca]

1 hour ago, Helmar said:

Happy hunting...

This has happened to be before. The problem get's fixed then the same problem comes back again in another beta. Basically what happens is that the pinned object gets moved to the Master layer. if you open your layers panel you will notice that the graphics has been moved to that layer. It's annoying that this keeps coming back unresolved.

Edit: To elaborate a bit further - this only happens if you pin to a text box coming from the Master Pages. If you create a text box on a page and pin anything to it this doesn't happen. I have reported this a number of times and it gets fixed and then the problem comes back again.

[Gabe]

Can you attach a sample of that document so we can have a look?

[thomaso]

59 minutes ago, Seneca said:

Basically what happens is that the pinned object gets moved to the Master layer. if you open your layers panel you will notice that the graphics has been moved to that layer. It's annoying that this keeps coming back unresolved.

Here (in "Questions") are some a recent posts with the pinning issue, too, which appears to be related to a text frame placed on a master page:

 

[Gabe]

Sorted. Issue logged. Thanks

[Patrick Connor]

We have made fixes/improvements to this area (Object pinned to a master page text frame becomes part of the masterpage when unpinned) of the program in the latest release.

The fixes and how to update are described in these forum posts.  

• Affinity Publisher 1.8.4 for Windows         ( Microsoft Store and Affinity Store )
• Affinity Publisher 1.8.4 for macOS            ( Mac App Store and Affinity Store )

We would appreciate you checking that this issue has now been resolved for you.