Hard time with linked text boxes

[artfuturo]

Hi guys

I am new to Affinity Publisher but have used other Text and DTP programs in the past. Still, I appreciate, I may oversee something here. However, I have tried about everything that is humanly possible to figure out what is going on and still can't fix it. Thus, I believe this could be a bug.

See attached two test files. How to reproduce:

1. Open Publisher File - see issue on page 2, super small text with tiny spacing values. Even if you apply Text Style Body Text, it won't fix it. 
2. Lets try to start from scratch again, open the Word File
3. Copy Word text (dummy text from a Guardian article)
4. CTRL-A and delete all text in Publisher .. so start from scratch
5. Paste the Word text into the columns - you see the same issue again.
6. Here, I tried to CTRL-A and apply the Text Style Body Text, no luck
7. I experience other strange things, e.g. there was a sudden Column Break but I didn't put any there and there were no issue with Text Flow options either, or some of the column text suddenly had a very large font, or some of the text simply disappeared into a black hole as far as visibility is concerned, but was still there in the background (CTRL-A and Copy, past into Notepad, text was still complete). 

I am at my end, sorry. Any help with this would be really appreciated. 

Kind regards
Phil 

Publisher Test_v2.afpub Test Text.docx

[MickRose]

There is formatting applied, presumably from the Word file. If you right click on the paragraph style and clear character styles it makes it much larger (11pt). The section at the top of the paragraph styles panel shows all the extra styling brought in from the Word copy & paste.

[artfuturo]

Hi Mick

thanks for that. I did suspect that the formatting didn't come from the Word Document, but it is actually a bug in Publisher. To prove that, I exported the text from the Word file into a simple .TXT file and used the same process as above, with the same result. First page all good, second page with micro fonts. 

A Select All, apply Body Text and Clear Character Styles doesn't change anything. Interestingly, if you select some of the small text on page two and then do a Clear Character Styles, it does fix that section. However, once you have found all small bits and then you try Select All and apply Body Text across the board to be certain you didn't miss anything, it goes back to the old issue. Further, if you try to fix all those micro font sections areas bit by bit, you suddenly get this (see attached).

This is seriously buggy stuff to me!

Regards

Phil 

[Joachim_L]

Perhaps you get better results deleting the old text frames and making new ones and linking them afterwards. But be careful when resizing the text frames. To change the dimensions use one of the handles sitting on the rectangle and not the second handle bottom right (which is a bit off the rectangle). With the second one off the rectangle you resize the text frame including the content. Linking "resized" and "dimension changed" text frames can lead to unexpected results.

Attached there is an example video of how to do it wrong.

[Gitta]

Artfuturo,

1. Open your failed Afpub file.
2. Delete the first frame box (= Text frame) completely (!!) (page 1).
3. Set up a new first frame box (page 1).
4. Copy Word text.
5. Insert Word text into the new first frame box (page 1).
6. Relink the new first frame box (page 1).
7. Delete the “super small text with tiny spacing values” in the relevant column.
8. Done!

Appendix
1. Open the attached Afpub file as a result.
2. Take a look at the Layers panel; our layers are colored (red).

Publisher Test_v3.afpub

['Chele]

I have been fighting the same battle-- over and over again. Is there no fix for this other than working around the problem when it shows up? I was working with a large document and this added many days of extra work. Tiny ant size font to 60+pts.. It is as if the text flow gets clogged. It is a nightmare. 

[Dennison]

Same problem. I did not use the Resize handle.

 

Is there any solution to this yet?

 

(using Mac version)

[Kslang]

Same problem here.  Causing a lot of time to correct.

[Hansha]

It is 2024 and Publisher still isn't capable of handling perhaps the 1st task a desktop publishing app is supposed to. This is laughable - are you serious Affinity? 

Ok, back to InDesign ...

[Hansha]

Btw – a workaround is not to make a new box but:

1. Copy + paste the previous box
2. Delete text
3. Link boxes. 

Still embarrassing for Affinity though.

[MikeTO]

@Hansha This is an old thread. One of the improvements in version 2.5 is the ability to easily reset the content scaling of a text frame. If the outer handle is solid blue, you've scaled the contents of the text frame. Double-click it and it will be restored to normal.

[Hansha]

Thank you, but it should be scaled to 0 by default. Why would someone want a random scaling without their choice and how hard is this to implement? 

Best!

[MikeTO]

2 minutes ago, Hansha said:

Thank you, but it should be scaled to 0 by default. Why would someone want a random scaling without their choice and how hard is this to implement? 

I'm not sure I follow. The default is no scaling - the content of text frames is only scaled if you drag the outer size handle. The problem is that most people don't know what it does so they drag it to scale the frame which changes the size of the text in the frame, too. They then "correct" the text size but the text is still being scaled, so as text is added and removed, it produces odd results.

This change was welcome because now there's an easy way to fix it. I wish it was a bit more obvious what the handle was for in the first place, to avoid accidents, but at least it's easy to fix now.

[Hansha]

Dragging a new textbox to the desired size should not affect the scale of the content to follow, period. This is simply an utterly weird design. Check the video. 

 

[walt.farrell]

28 minutes ago, Hansha said:

Dragging a new textbox to the desired size should not affect the scale of the content to follow, period. This is simply an utterly weird design. Check the video. 

Unfortunately, the video does not show the creation of the text frame that started out with the overflow. But you can see that it has been rescaled using the rescaling handle, as (in 2.5) that handle shows with a blue fill:

What that means is that the text in the frame that overflowed only appears as large as it does because you've rescaled the frame (and its contents) using that handle. The new frame has not been rescaled, and therefore when you flow the text into it, it is smaller (the actual font size) rather than the misleading size it was in the first frame.

To fix the text in the first frame, double-click that blue dot. Then adjust the font size in the Context Toolbar to get the font size you want.

[Hansha]

OK, I understand now - thank you.

However, this behaviour is very unintuitive. Namely, regardless of how you resize the text box (with or without content) I mostly the type size will be adjusted another way and postfestum. Additionally, the logic tells us that linking two boxes serves the continuation of a text in another box not creating an independent text with a different style. In this case, the application should apply the same resize ratio to the box when linked with the parent and retain the stylistic coherence of the paragraph. 

It is just a really bad and senseless design.