Publisher is Unusable Due to Lag/Slowness

[osarusan]

I've searched around on the forums for this and it looks like this has been an issue for a year or two now... but I just can't believe how bad it is.

I thought I could use Publisher as a replacement for InDesign. I have a pretty powerful PC with 32 GB of RAM and I struggle to do anything in Publisher. It would almost be laughable how bad it is, if it wasn't so frustrating. Loading a file takes 5 to 10 minutes. Saving it takes just as long. Navigating the file is horribly laggy and trying to do any editing at all frequently causes the program to crash.

Granted I'm trying to work with a fairly large book file, but it moves at lightning speed in InDesign. I've made sure all of the resources are linked and not embedded, but that hasn't helped.

Further, every time I save the file it saves at a drastically different file size. I've had this one file fluctuate from 80MB to 1.3GB in between saves, despite changing only a tiny amount of text.

I've tried the advice found on the forums... removing the app settings, hiding the Paragraph panel, uninstalling, reinstalling, switching to the beta... Minor improvements aside, the program is still too slow to be usable at all. What is going on here?? 

[Old Bruce]

I am a Mac user. You say you have a PC, I will assume Windows but which version of the OS people who use windows will need to know in order to assist you.

14 hours ago, osarusan said:

I thought I could use Publisher as a replacement for InDesign....

 

14 hours ago, osarusan said:

... it moves at lightning speed in InDesign.

This makes me think you are using an IDML file, am I correct? There are going to be InDesign features which do not transfer well and others which do not transfer at all.

14 hours ago, osarusan said:

 I've made sure all of the resources are linked and not embedded, but that hasn't helped.

Where are the resources and what sort are they (I am assuming they are graphic files) , 

Regarding the different sizes when saving do you have the File > Save History with Document turned on in Publisher (and is there a similar setting for InDesign)?

[osarusan]

Thanks for the reply Old Bruce!

I am on Windows 10 Pro (2020 Edition).

You are correct that I tried using Affinity with IDML files at first, however I quickly switched over to using AFPUB files. Both file types are slow for me. The AFPUB files are comparatively faster than IDML files, however they are still excruciatingly slow. When I was comparing the software, I actually built the same book in both InDesign and Publisher, and while there are a lot of things I prefered about Publisher's interface, the performance was just incomparable. Publisher was terrible to the point of being unusable, while InDesign was extremely fast and responsive.

In regards to Save History, I am not using it. In regards to the file sizes, it's crazy how random it is. While working on a file, it started at 150 MB. I saved it and it went down to 80 MB. After working a bit later, it was 1.5 GB. I did a "Save As" and made a copy of the fifile just to see, and that was 1.2 GB. It's all over the place.

For the resources, nothing is embedded. The linked files are large images (PSD) and there are a lot of them, so my guess is that the program is actually embedding them when it says it's linking them, but I can't confirm that. I'm not sure if there is a similar setting in InDesign, but if there is I don't use it.

[Callum]

Hi Osarusan,

Welcome to the forums

I apologise for the delayed response. Does your document contain a large amount of embedded images or documents etc? If possible could you go into the apps preferences and send me a screenshot of the entire performance tab?

Thanks

C

[osarusan]

Thanks for the reply @Callum.

The file contains a large number of images, however I have them set to be links, not embedded.

I have a suspicion that the file was embedding the images anyway, even though I individually checked each one, as well as the document's resource manager, and they all were listed as links, not embeds.

I tried recreating the document from scratch, and the file size was around 80 MB; more inline with what I expected. But as I worked on the file, it ballooned again in size, despite the documents all definitely being linked. Eventually the program was just so slow that I had to give up and redo the document in InDesign.

I'm attaching the performance tab. As you can see, I was never able to enable hardware acceleration, as it always told me my graphics card is unsupported whenever I tried.