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Publisher: how to insert a huge amount of text?


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Hi, I've written 125 pages in Apple Pages. I want to copy and paste all that text into Affinity Publisher, using linked text frames.

Each page has two columns, each column a text frame, that is linked with the others, except from the inner of left page to the inner frame of the right page. Can't link those. Whenever I click the triangle on the inner left frame to link it to the inner right frame, the cursor doesn't change.

Anyway, I copied the text of the 125 pages, setup 100 pages in Publisher, and pasted it in the inner frame of the right page. It only pasted the text up to the outer frame of the right page. And the same happens in the left page.

I also tried the option "Add pages from file..." (from a PDF, because for whatever reason Publisher can't import directly from Pages) only to realize there's no option to assign a master page and the imported pages had the dimension of the page set in the source file. When I tried applying a master to it, it distorted the content. On top of that, the content imported by this option was composed line by line. So this option is completely useless in my case.

I'm sure there's a better way than clicking on the text frames on each page to make the text flow.

Can you please give me a hand on this?

Thanks!
 

 

Bildschirmfoto 2020-11-26 um 23.49.47.png

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8 hours ago, Elio said:

Each page has two columns, each column a text frame, that is linked with the others, except from the inner of left page to the inner frame of the right page. Can't link those. Whenever I click the triangle on the inner left frame to link it to the inner right frame, the cursor doesn't change.

Strange. That works for me. I'm curious why you seem to have linked the outer frame on the right back to the outer frame on the left, though. That doesn't seem right. If you did that intentinally I would delete that link and try linking the inner frames again. Perhaps Publisher is preventing you from creating an infinite loop, which would result if you created the inner link while you have that outer link.

You must get the two inner frames linked. That's the only way the flow from page to page will work.

Then, to add all your text:

  1. Create one document page/spread.
  2. Paste all of the text (or Place the file) into the first text frame. It will overflow, and give you a red linking triangle on the lower right.
  3. Shift+Click the red triangle, and Publisher will create the remaining pages it needs.

-- 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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Hi Walt, thanks a lot for your response!

If you did that intentinally I would delete that link and try linking the inner frames again. 

I did that and that was an improvement, now the text flows throughout the four frames in the spread.

>  Shift+Click the red triangle, and Publisher will create the remaining pages it needs.

When I did this, Publisher created the pages but didn't let the text flow throughout all the text frames in all those pages.

Just in case I created a new document and repeated these steps in the first and only page in that document and this time, it did work. So it looks like Publisher will only do it if it's the only page in the document. Thanks a lot of the help, Walt!

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There is a trick to having this work in a document with pages ahead of where you want to start inserting the text. Let us say you want page 5 to be the beginning of the insertion, it is Right hand page being an odd number. Apply your two page linked text frames master page to Page 5. Make two more pages and apply the same master page to the spread, link page 5 to page 6. Insert the text it will flow from page 5 through page 6 to 'end' on page 7. Shift click on page 7's overflow button and all the pages will be added.

Caveats:

It is important to have the text flow from a double page spread for the shift click to automatically create the populated text. If you start from page 5 you'll get a whole bunch of unpopulated and unlinked spreads generated.

You cannot have pages after page 7 as per my example unless you want them to be pushed to the end of the document. Meaning Pages 8 & 9 will no longer be there they will be pushed behind the newly created pages.

Summing up, inserting autoflowing text after page one needs to be done from a two page spread (with its Master Page having linked text frames).

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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