Cannot "unlock" placed image in Affinity Publisher

[David Kadavy]

I placed an image, and cannot modify it. I can't replace it through the Resource Manager. I can't delete it from the Layer's palette. Once selected on the Layers palette, a message at the bottom of the window says "The selection is locked and cannot be moved. Unlock the selection to transform it."

AFAIK it's not locked. Even if I choose "Unlock" or "Unlock all" from the menu, nothing changes.

I'm out of ideas on what I might be getting wrong. Is this the expected behavior?

[thomaso]

Hi David,
Welcome to the Affinity Forums!

Note ...
1. at the image the  x handles (different to the usual  • handles),
2. the orange | bar at the left edge of your top layer and its name "(Master ...)", with your
3. image nested (indented) as child of the master parent layer.
These are indicators for an applied Master Page and for objects on master pages or objects created (or moved) inside master layers on document pages.

To access the image you would need to detach the master layer temporarily: right-click > "Edit detached".
If you will have many of those items you might consider not to place them inside a master layer. Once you have the master layer detached you also could move the image layer outside the master to enable its access at any time.

[David Kadavy]

Thank you! I hadn't considered that something could be included in a Master page yet not actually be in the original master page.

[carl123]

3 hours ago, David Kadavy said:

Thank you! I hadn't considered that something could be included in a Master page yet not actually be in the original master page.

Ideally that should not be happening unless you specifically wanted it to be within the on-page Master Page structure.

There be gremlins!

[David Kadavy]

Okay, I struggled to imagine a situation where I would want that to happen, so good to know that it shouldn't be happening. It certainly was not the behavior I expected!

[thomaso]

It's not necessarily that you want it to happen but you might make it happen unwillingly. For instance by feeding the 'gremlins' @carl123 mentioned. Possibly such happened on page 2, where your screenshot seems to indicate that the image got pasted inside the master text frame "(Chapter 1 Mind...)", becoming a nested, pinned child object this way – while the image on page 3 is not embedded in the story text frame.

[David Kadavy]

Quote

It's not necessarily that you want it to happen but you might make it happen unwillingly.

Right – presumably if the software is designed to allow one to make this mistake, there is a good reason. That's what I can't figure out – why someone would want this behavior.

Anyway, thank you for your help!

[thomaso]

15 hours ago, David Kadavy said:

That's what I can't figure out – why someone would want this behavior.

I think your document is an example: You seem to have placed the story into master text frames in purpose, right? – What was your reason?

Now, if you want to place images at various spots within the text, the most efficient way is placing the images as pinned objects inside the text because this way they maintain their position relative to specific texts, regardless whether text gets reformatted or text gets added or deleted: the images will flow with the text. Here you may want to place the images inside the text frames, and, since the text frames are on a master page, the images are nested in the master layer as well, as wanted sotosay.

Note: if you want to have the text auto-flow + auto-generate required pages you don't need to use master text frames. Means your document would also work if you use the master pages only for margins, chapter titles and page numbers, and place the story on the first document page into a newly created frame and then shift-click the text-flow triangle symbol.