Importing text with styles still not good enough in AP

[Andrew Crompton]

I know this topic has been addressed quite a few times before, but I'm using the recently-released v1.8.4 of Publisher and there is still a problem for me when I import text from another AP document or from a Word document, which I do a lot.

What I need is really quite simple. I have an AP document in which I have defined all my required styles. I want to import into it text from another AP document or from a Word document which has styles with the same names but different definitions. What I want is simply that the imported text should take on the style-definitions of the receiving AP document. Not complicated, then, but I cannot see any way to make AP do this.

There are, of course, various options available through the Imported Text Styles dialog. These include replacing the styles in the receiving document by corresponding styles in the incoming document, renaming the incoming styles and so on. But there is no option that I have found for replacing the styles in the incoming document by those in the receiving document.

If this option exists and I have overlooked it, please someone point it out to me.

If it does not exist, please, kind Affinity developers, include it in a future release of AP.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Andrew Crompton said:

when I import text from another AP document or from a Word document,

How are you "importing" the text in each of those cases (APu document, or Word document)?

[Andrew Crompton]

Hi, Walt - thanks for your reply.

I have tried various things - all I can think of, in fact:

1. Add pages from file I can use this to import Affinity files; it brings up the Imported Text Styles dialog, but that does not give me the option I need.
2. Place I can use this to import Affinity files and Word documents; it does not bring up the Imported Text Styles dialog so I have no options for managing styles during import.
3. Copy and Paste I have used this, for example, to import a large quantity of text from Word. I obviously get no options for managing styles in this case. Publisher creates new styles based on those in the Word text and that often produces duplicates (eg. Normal and Normal 1; Body Text and Body Text 1).

Andrew

[walt.farrell]

Thanks for the clarification.

4 hours ago, Andrew Crompton said:

Add pages from file I can use this to import Affinity files; it brings up the Imported Text Styles dialog, but that does not give me the option I need.

Are you sure it doesn't have what you asked for? From what I can see it allows:

• Renaming the conflicting text style;
• Replacing the target document's conflicting text style; or
• By unchecking the box, using the target document's conflicting text style.

I think that last one is what you want.

4 hours ago, Andrew Crompton said:

Place I can use this to import Affinity files and Word documents; it does not bring up the Imported Text Styles dialog so I have no options for managing styles during import.

That won't work for you as the Placed file is entirely self-contained, and will never adjust to the style of the outer container.

4 hours ago, Andrew Crompton said:

Copy and Paste I have used this, for example, to import a large quantity of text from Word. I obviously get no options for managing styles in this case. Publisher creates new styles based on those in the Word text and that often produces duplicates (eg. Normal and Normal 1; Body Text and Body Text 1).

In my experiences doing this with .docx files created by LibreOffice, if the styles are truly identical between the source and target document, I do not get the duplicate/renamed styles. I just keep the styles from the target document. But it is possible that my experiments have not been extensive enough.

[Andrew Crompton]

Thanks again for the quick reply. With regard to "Add pages from file", which I get when importing a Publisher file --

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Are you sure it doesn't have what you asked for? From what I can see it allows:

• Renaming the conflicting text style;
• Replacing the target document's conflicting text style; or
• By unchecking the box, using the target document's conflicting text style.

I think that last one is what you want.

I just tried again the third of the things you mention here, and it works as you say. Thanks.

(I find that it is important to uncheck the boxes for just the conflicting styles: if you do so for a non-conflicting style, the result is that that style is not imported and all the text associated with it in the source document is imported with no style allocated.)

So this enables me to do what I want when importing from another Publisher file. Unfortunately, there still seems to be no straightforward way of managing the styles when importing from a Word document. (I think it would be quite difficult for me to ensure complete identity of styles between Word and Publisher documents given that the style-definitions can include different parameters.)

What I probably can do is: (1) create a new Publisher document with no styles; (2) bring into it all my Word text - this will also import all the styles from the Word document; (3) save that new Publisher document; (4) use Add pages from file to bring the text from the newly created Publisher document into my target document and use the Imported Text Styles dialog to merge the styles correctly.

I think that should bring the desired result, but it is not exactly quick and easy. So it would be nice - as I said in my original post - if a future version of Publisher would make it possible to use something like the Imported Text Styles dialog when importing text from Word.

Thanks again for your help, Walt - it helped clarify things for me.

[MaryOJ]

Hello there, not quite sure if my question fits here but I guess it does:

When importing styles from ANOTHER AP file, fonts, and line spacing (also line decorations) are never the same sizeas the originals. Actually they're way bigger! Really don't know why but I have to keep editing every style I have already defined them before. How can I avoid this?

[walt.farrell]

19 minutes ago, MaryOJ said:

When importing styles from ANOTHER AP file, fonts, and line spacing (also line decorations) are never the same sizeas the originals. Actually they're way bigger! Really don't know why but I have to keep editing every style I have already defined them before. How can I avoid this?

Can you share a sample file, or even better, a source file (containing a style) and a target file that you've imported it into, so we can look for possible problems?

[garrettm30]

On 1/23/2021 at 12:20 PM, MaryOJ said:

When importing styles from ANOTHER AP file, fonts, and line spacing (also line decorations) are never the same sizeas the originals.

My first guess is that the document resolutions are not identical from source to target.

Indeed, what Walt suggest about sharing a source and target example would be helpful so we can either see if there is a bug, room for a feature improvement, or an opportunity to point out how you can achieve what you are looking for if it is currently possible.

[MaryOJ]

So that means that I should attach a file right here? Let me know. Thanks for the help!

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, MaryOJ said:

So that means that I should attach a file right here?

Yes, if you have (or can make) one that shows the problem and that doesn't contain any sensitive information.

[MaryOJ]

Hello again and thanks for your availability.

I'll try to be as clear as possible so you can help us out with this.

1. I'm opening IDML files (getting them from Indesign from where I'm happily transitioning to you) :-)

a. When I open those files and cancel the styles to import the new ones I have already set in a template:  fonts are bigger, line spacing is bigger and even some assets (which as you will see by the levels are made with individual lines) change their thickness.

I'm enclosing a file for you to see how big the same text style becomes when it's imported.

2. Since I've bought the software I have NEVER been able to use my printer with its "front & back" functionality which worked perfectly with Indesign, so it cannot be a matter of the software/hardware. I'm enclosing an image so you can see that I've selected the "front & back" option, but it has never happened.

THANKS A LOT FOR YOUR HELP. I really appreciate what you guys have been giving us with such a great software at a very affordable price. Looking forward to new feature and surprises. Really grateful!

PS: I use Publisher to prepare my lessons and write.

For Affinity Staff.afpub

[Andrew Crompton]

So my original point still holds:

Quote

importing text with styles is still not good enough in AP

Having been forced, in the absence of proper style-mapping on import, to look for a workaround, here is what I have come up with:

    1. Create a afpub document containing all the style-definitions you need: this document will be used as a template. It does not need to contain any text.

    2. Create a new afpub document and delete all the styles that it contains by default.

    3. Import into this new afpub document the required text – this can come from another afpub document or from a Word document (eg. by copying and pasting) or anywhere else. Text-styles will also be imported from the source-document: it is not important at this point that the styles are imported accurately.
  note       The Normal style seems not to get assigned on import, so it is best to rename it in the source document before importing.

    4. Import into your new afpub document the styles from the template document mentioned in step 1. Because both the source and the destination documents are afpub documents, you will be given the opportunity to choose how to manage the styles:  choose to replace all the styles in the receiving document with the same-named styles from the template document.

For me, this gives the desired result. Of course, the method does require that you have a document with all the required styles, to use as a template (step 1). I appreciate that if you don't already have such a document, it could be quite a big job to create it.

Hope that helps.

[MaryOJ]

OK. I'll try that one.

I already had a TEMPLATE with the desired styles to work in.

What I would do was to open the IDML file from Publisher. Then grab the elements from there and paste them into the template.

Does this seems reasonable to you?

[Andrew Crompton]

I have tried something like that (although not with a IDML file) and it did not produce the right results. When you paste into the template, AP  will probably add the collection of styles from the IDML document to the collection of styles in the template. Therefore you will end up with lots of new styles, including lots of similar names like Body Text and Body Text 1. That is, in my experience, a big mess.

The critical thing is to do the import in such a way that AP will present you with a dialog box (called "the Imported Text Styles dialog") giving you choices about how to manage the styles as you import them. I think this dialog box appears only when you are importing from one afpub document into another afpub document. The 4 steps I describe above are designed precisely with this in mind.

Have another go - hope it works!

[Andrew Crompton]

Just received the AP 1.9 update, hoping that things might have been improved there, but as far as I can see, there is no change.