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I am quite new to Affinity software but getting used to it. I have been using Publisher to put together A4 documents, with a cover page positioned as a right hand page, then all pages following set up as two page spreads. I am quote happy with how these display on the screen before exporting, but can't seem to export them as they are displayed. I would ideally like it so that when a PDF is exported, the cover page appears as one A4 page, then the following pages are displayed by default as two page spreads of separate A4 pages. The only options I seem to be able to achieve are either all single A4 sheets (one after the other rather then viewed as spreads) or the two page spreads export as one A3 sheet, which is not great when I number each page. Is there a way to achieve what I am trying? Any advice appreciated!

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Thanks Fixx,

I use Adobe Reader to view my PDFs and as a relatively standard free product to for viewing these filetypes it is a good bet that most other people viewing my documents would also use the same software. Adobe Reader does offer functionality to view pages side-by-side, however all pages are then one out of place when using a cover page. I know people who have used InDesign which has the functionality I am after and I know I could use Acrobat, but the reason for using Affinity's software was so that I didn't need to use any of the Adobe paid software.

The view which is displayed when exporting as spreads rather than pages is almost what I need in terms of how the files display, however as pages are numbered and included on a contents page it really would be useful to have exported as separate pages, but automatically displayed as a spread. Would I be right in thinking this might not be possible by just using Publisher at the moment then?

Thanks in advance!

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Could we see a screen shot of what you have in Publisher's Pages panel and a screen shot of what you want in the PDF viewer. This is what I see

1913234499_ScreenShot2020-05-23at8_46_30AM.png.ff01c8043d9e3dd5e95948ab82dab543.png

Publisher Pages:

594986846_ScreenShot2020-05-23at8_46_00AM.png.20f4dc6b6c8645a98c31c6d2e6fbfa28.png

 

PDF:

310353710_ScreenShot2020-05-23at8_47_48AM.png.f5c31bd62206d28b50aa78b1cad3b58f.png

 

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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See below screenshots. The first is the page/spread setup, ideally how i would like the final PDF to be set up and displayed. The cover sheet includes a table of contents which leads to numbered pages. The second is the output settings, I haven't really tweaked these much from the standard. For this particular document I chose the "export" options as it kept the file size smaller (the document is for a planning application for new houses, files larger than 10mb are not accepted). The third is the final document. It appears to be displayed correctly on the whole, but rather than pages 1-11, the 2-page spreads act as one page meaning the document is now technically 6 pages long - quite confusing when trying to compare with a table of contents. I know it seems like a fairly trivial issue, but the presentation is quite important to me, especially as this was why I switched from more traditional word-processing software.

Thanks! Hope this is the info you needed?

Annotation 2020-05-23 184547.jpg

Annotation 2020-05-23 184647.jpg

Annotation 2020-05-23 184731.jpg

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28 minutes ago, OwenTT93 said:

It appears to be displayed correctly on the whole, but rather than pages 1-11, the 2-page spreads act as one page meaning the document is now technically 6 pages long - quite confusing when trying to compare with a table of contents.

What you need to do is export Pages instead of spreads and then your viewers will have to choose to display two pages instead of single pages. I don't know if it is possible to automatically guarantee all the various PDF viewers to display 2 pages.

826303653_ScreenShot2020-05-23at11_23_35AM.png.f0d5068bad1af0531c183a70b9c42dcf.png

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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Just now, Old Bruce said:

What you need to do is export Pages instead of spreads and then your viewers will have to choose to display two pages instead of single pages. I don't know if it is possible to automatically guarantee all the various PDF viewers to display 2 pages.

826303653_ScreenShot2020-05-23at11_23_35AM.png.f0d5068bad1af0531c183a70b9c42dcf.png

 

Screen Recording 2020-05-23 at 11.26.06 AM.mov 5.02 MB · 0 downloads

Thanks, I have tried this but it is sort of important that the document is displayed correctly by default. As I mentioned these are for planning applications, so as the public are able to view them I would never be able to control how each user displays it unless it is default - the contents of both pages in the spread relate to each other so need to be displayed together, maybe I may need to rethink my layouts instead! 

Thank you anyway, I wondered if I was going mad and missing some setting somewhere but maybe it just isn't doable!

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9 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

I don't know if it is possible to automatically guarantee all the various PDF viewers to display 2 pages.

There are options available in PDF files to control the initial view, but none of the Affinity applications allow one to set those options.

The most that can be done with Publisher is to export spreads, which as Owen noted will export the two-page spread as a single PDF page, and won't let the user switch to viewing them individually.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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Thanks for confirming Walt. I was afraid this might be the case but at least I am not going mad! I know Acrobat can be used as mentioned by Fixx earlier on, but are you aware of any free software which may be able to do this? I don't really want to pay for further software when arranging pages would be its only function!

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If you want you can just ignore the fact that the pages in the pdf do not align with the actual pages. I'll wager that most people won't notice. They may not even have the thumbnail view set to open. Do you know if people are going to be viewing this via the web and or browsers because there is another potential hurdle.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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Hi,

At first glance there's no reason for you document to be in streads, like images on 2 pages, or map with legend on one side.
Don't forget that everyone wanting to read your PDF on a tablet or a smarphone will spend a lot of time zooming and navigating the pages. Even on PC, I never read magazines diplayed as 2 pages, but I'd rather display one page and zoom on the half page I'm reading, zooming on pictures and captions if needed.

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Thanks for your help everyone. I think maybe I am just being a bit picky with the way I want to present my documents, but maybe I should get used to presenting them a single page at a time, rather than 2 page spreads. It's mainly because presentation-wise two pages seems to work out about right per topic that I need to address in these documents, and in my head I had thought it'd be best to view both pages at the same time, but rearranging a little to be one page at a time might be what I need to do.

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  • 2 years later...

This is late in the game but after my quick search for a how to I didn't see solution. To be specific, I have maps over spreads and pages that are meant to be seen together, as in an open print booklet. (ie, doc is letter sized, prints as tabloid booklet after I impose it)

My solution will be to just have the two cover letter pages show up centred on a tabloid page. Rest of pages as normal tabloid spreads.

Apologies if this is answered somewhere else in forums. I see we're now on V2.0.4 so maybe it's now possible and I just didn't see solution.

Peter

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