Problem with Styles in Publisher

[trevorm]

Whichever Style I choose in Publisher, it underlines the text and turns it grey. When I check by editing the style underlining is turned off and colour is black. Am I doing something wrong or is Publisher corrupted?

[000]

Check if you accidentally applied a character style too (that is an annoying thing in InDesign that happens to me all the time, have not seen something similar in AP though).

[trevorm]

Thanks Jens, I will look.

[trevorm]

Jens, the character style is certainly wrong on the page but not in the setup for the style.

 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, trevorm said:

Jens, the character style is certainly wrong on the page but not in the setup for the style.

 

Screenshots, and/or a sample .afpub document, would help. There are so many possibilities that without some more information we're just guessing.

[000]

1 hour ago, trevorm said:

character style is certainly wrong on the page but not in the setup for the style.

Character and Paragraph Styles are independent in Publisher, it's possible that this character properties were applied to the cursor / empty text frame and before you pasted your text and then were taken over for some reason (applying a paragraph style won't delete character style properties).

Walt is right though, this is just guesswork, a sample file or screenshot would take us further faster.

[trevorm]

Thanks, Jens. I will take out a page from the offending document and post it here but cannot do at present as I am in the middle of typesetting our village monthly magazine (which is the problem document) so it may be pm today or tomorrow before I post.

It occurred to me that the problem may be due to the wide range of documents I import into the magazine. I keep the magazine file and each month just delete the text, graphics etc., and then import and paste in the new material, keeping all the fixed pages from month to month. This has resulted in an enormous number of styles presumably taken from the imported .docx files. I have had a few rogue docx files recently and the problem appeared about the same time so I may have a rogue style. I will also try deleting all the extra styles and see what happens.

[trevorm]

Hi Jens. Tried creating a new document with the same Magazine Style and imported one file. No problem at all. The same file imported into the main magazine document has the problem. I have copied the document and removed all but that one page. Problem still there. I attach two files, one with the problem and the new one without. If you can tell me what I have done I will be very grateful.

Style problem copy 1.afpub Style problem copy 3.afpub

[walt.farrell]

Both of those display in Publisher identically for me, @trevorm.

Can you provide a sceenshot from the one with the problem, so we can see what you're seeing?

[Old Bruce]

On 11/20/2020 at 7:48 AM, trevorm said:

Hi Jens. Tried creating a new document with the same Magazine Style and imported one file. No problem at all. The same file imported into the main magazine document has the problem. I have copied the document and removed all but that one page. Problem still there. I attach two files, one with the problem and the new one without. If you can tell me what I have done I will be very grateful.

Style problem copy 1.afpub 119.27 kB · 4 downloads Style problem copy 3.afpub 98.19 kB · 4 downloads

The file ...copy 1.afpub has the Character Style Hyperlink applied to some of the text. The document is a greyscale document and the character style has an RGB fill (some sort of blue)

Aside: Just my 2 cents worth of unasked for advice ... You have far too many Text Styles in the documents, Normal 34 !?!?

[trevorm]

Thanks Old Bruce. First the two documents should look alike as I set them up to be with No Style.. If you attempt to change the style of *copy 1 to Magazine Style then it comes up grey and underlined, not what it was set up to be, as do any of the other styles. *copy three does not have Magazine Style but changing the style does not produce the grey underlining so the new document, which has never had any copy material placed in except that which is there, does not have the problem. i.e problem in one of the styles I deleted.

I know there are far too many styles. I only use one but every time I place a document into the magazine, Publisher creates a new style to match whatever the contributor used and I get some very weird looking documents. I created the Magazine Style to enable me to quickly convert these documents. I have been doing this with Publisher since its release with no problem until recently. It is clearly one of these recent program created styles that is the problem one, but I don't know which. If I delete virtually all the styles and re-create the Magazine Style the problem goes away (as in *copy 3). My concern is that it will return when I start the next magazine and I may not catch it when it happens so my magazine style will be corrupted again.

Am I correct in thinking that Publisher will be perfectly happy with just one style so that I can delete any new styles that appear? I am not sure this would stop the rogue style from corrupting the others before I could stop it, but deleting them all would let me correct the Magazine style sheet I use.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, trevorm said:

Am I correct in thinking that Publisher will be perfectly happy with just one style so that I can delete any new styles that appear?

If Publisher is creating new Text Styles for you when you import a document, then those Text Styles will be used for the imported text. If you delete the Text Styles, you won't have any Text Styles assigned to that text, and it probably won't look as you want it to look.

1 hour ago, trevorm said:

First the two documents should look alike as I set them up to be with No Style.. If you attempt to change the style of *copy 1 to Magazine Style then it comes up grey and underlined, not what it was set up to be, as do any of the other styles.

The text in "Copy 1" is not No Style; it is Magazine Style+ (for the Paragraph text style) and either Hyperlink+ or Internet Link+ for the Character text style, depending on where I insert the text cursor.

[Old Bruce]

3 hours ago, trevorm said:

Am I correct in thinking that Publisher will be perfectly happy with just one style so that I can delete any new styles that appear? I am not sure this would stop the rogue style from corrupting the others before I could stop it, but deleting them all would let me correct the Magazine style sheet I use.

Start with the empty document and the one style you want. Import/place/add stuff and then use the Find and Replace to find the new imported styles and change them to your original style. Now go and delete unused styles from the Text Styles panel.

Repeat after each import.

[trevorm]

Walt thanks for the comment. The problem is that the imported text is mostly haphazard styles with wrong fonts, justification etc. I need to convert them to Magazine Style so could presumabley delete their style and then apply Magazine Style. I must have sent you an earlier version as the one I kept is as I said. No matter. I did not insert the hyperlink and internet links. They must have been in the original document.

 

Old Bruce this is just the advice I needed. When I create a new document Publisher inserts a set of basic styles. I presume that delete unused styles would remove the basic styles as they will be unused. Will this matter?

Sorry to make such a meal of ths but I am very new to using anything other than Page Plus.

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, trevorm said:

When I create a new document Publisher inserts a set of basic styles. I presume that delete unused styles would remove the basic styles as they will be unused. Will this matter?

It should not matter. Text Styles are specific to the document, and if they're not needed in that document they won't have any effect if you delete them.

[trevorm]

Thanks Walt. I have created a new template document with all the fixed graphics pages etc and only a single Magazine style and it works fine.

By the way Copy 1 that I posted has the text in Black Tahoma, not underlined with No Style, but if you apply any style including Magazine Stlye they are all grey underlined. The Magazine Style is set asTahoma black not underlined, so something is overruling it. With the new template I can check every time I place a new text file so should be able to identify the culprit if it appears again. I can then get at the originator to find out what they are doing.

Thanks to you, Old Bruce  and Jens for all your help. Trevorm