Automatic Page numbering doesn't work anymore [1.8.3]

[MmmMaarten]

Months ago I made a Publisher file with Master pages and auto page numbering. Using this now I was very much surprised to see this automatic page numbering doesn't work anymore. All pages now have the same number: 1.

I stripped the file to the bare minimum to show the issue. See file in the attachment: both Page 1 as well as Page 2 show `pag. 1/2` in the right bottom corner.

BTW the placeholders for these fields in the master pages for current page number (#) and the last pagenumber (2 in this case) are very confusing in my opinon and don't indicate there is a placeholder active.
[EDIT] I moved these to another thread as a feature request:

 

test.afpub

[Jon P]

You have 2 sections in that document, the second set to start renumbering on Page 2, is that maybe the issue in the non cut down version?

If you set Section 2 to continue page numbering it should behave as expected in that test file

Quote

 Now for some reason there is no placeholder for the amount of pages anymore, but the masterpage shows the amount of pages as a filled in value instead

I see pag # / 2 on both Master Pages so not sure if I am missing something here.

[MmmMaarten]

2 hours ago, Jon P said:

You have 2 sections in that document, the second set to start renumbering on Page 2, is that maybe the issue in the non cut down version?

If you set Section 2 to continue page numbering it should behave as expected in that test file

I see pag # / 2 on both Master Pages so not sure if I am missing something here.

Thanks for your response. Not sure what you mean with sections, but the issue is the there in both the simplified file as in the original file.

I see 'page # / 2' in the master pages too, as described above. In the Pages though you see '1 / 2' on both page 1 and page 2. Page 2 obviously need to be on '2 / 2' instead.

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, wigglepixel said:

Not sure what you mean with sections, but the issue is the there in both the simplified file as in the original file.

From the menu, Document > Section Manager... and you'll see this:

Note that you've configured section 2 to start on page 2, and you've said that the page numbering restarts at 1.

[MmmMaarten]

17 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

From the menu, Document > Section Manager... and you'll see this:

Note that you've configured section 2 to start on page 2, and you've said that the page numbering restarts at 1.

Thanks for your reaction guys. I never used that Section Manager so I'm surprised to see there are two sections in the file.

When I remove the second section the page numbers are okay, but as I never used this Section Manager that's still strange.

I did use 'Add pages from file' to add two pages from another file. But I wouldn't expect that to create sections without telling (at least I hope so!!), and besides that; I removed those pages after copying the contents to new master-pages.

So the issue remains, although maybe a little clearer; why are there suddenly two sections in the file? I never created them. That seems like an issue to me.

Also, I like to point out my other points in my initial post again; the unclear placeholders for field-values (see initial post above). 

[Joachim_L]

28 minutes ago, wigglepixel said:

why are there suddenly two sections in the file?

When you create a document you get automatically a section, by adding pages from a different file you get another section from this file. So in the end you have two sections already. Hard to guess for Serif if you want to keep the sections from other documents or not.

The placeholders are not (soooo) unclear. You can make them visible with Menu Text -> Highlight Fields

[MmmMaarten]

1 hour ago, Joachim_L said:

Hard to guess for Serif if you want to keep the sections from other documents or not.

My main concern with this is that a lot of people don't know about these regions even being there or that they are added by ''Add pages from file'. I never knew about these regions until now, well I heard about it once, but never used it. But it did mess up the page numbering.

That's why IMHO when adding pages from another file Affinity should:
- Ask the user to import the section or add the pages to an existing section
- Never import sections and add it to the current section (if possible)

Also, as written above, I removed the pages that were added with 'Add pages from file', so I don't see the logic in keeping sections after deleting the pages inside that section.

1 hour ago, Joachim_L said:

The placeholders are not (soooo) unclear. You can make them visible with Menu Text -> Highlight Fields

Thanks for the hint. I didn't know about that 'Highlight Fields' menu. That's helpful to some point, but still; how do you know what these two 2's stand for?

IMHO this should display something like:

page. #PAGNUM# / #PAGCOUNT#

to be informative. These 2's don't tell me nothing about what fields are used here. Or am I missing something?

[walt.farrell]

10 minutes ago, wigglepixel said:

IMHO this should display something like:

page. #PAGNUM# / #PAGCOUNT#

In the Layers panel for your file I noticed that text frame showing as "pag. #/total pages" (or something like that; it's from memory).

[Joachim_L]

Walt, you ruined my answer. 😭

[walt.farrell]

14 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

Walt, you ruined my answer. 😭

But you had a much better visual of the answer

[MmmMaarten]

 

17 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

In the Layers panel for your file I noticed that text frame showing as "pag. #/total pages" (or something like that; it's from memory).

Yes, I know. But this is not very useful. I shouldn't have created one thread to address several issues, but single threads instead. So I moved this fields-request to the feature-request forum and will edit my initial post to keep things focussed on the sections and the automatic page numbering issue here.

 

Please keep this thread about the initial issue about sections and automatic page numbering.

 A response by Affinity to this section-issue would be appreciated! (see my previous posts above) Are there any plans improving these issues?

 

 

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, wigglepixel said:

A response by Affinity to this section-issue would be appreciated! (see my previous posts above) Are there any plans improving these issues?

I'm sure they will, when this bug report reaches the front of the queue. But for clarity, perhaps you can clarify what you think the issue is.

So far it seeems to me that you just didn't understand that using Add Pages From File would create a new section. Other than that fact being missing from the Help for Merging Documents, I don't think I see an issue for Serif to address.

[Charter]

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