Missing feateure in text styles

[Alfred Beschle]

Ever since I came across Affinity suite I was quite impressed about the features and, above all, the performance and the speed. Working on a book project with a dozen different files which will only later be put together I miss a feature in text styles: In both Quark XPress and Indesgin if a text style in use will be deleted I will be asked if I want to replace it by a different one. This seems not possible in Publisher! Without warning it will be deleted and then I have to find which Text boxes are affected.

Have you considered of implementing this advantages into future updates? If so, I guess I wouldn't be the only one who'd be lucky about that…

Regards Alfred

[MikeTO]

+1

It should at least warn you that you're about to delete a style that is in use.

[garrettm30]

I do agree. There have been a few different threads where something of the sort has been requested. After using Publisher for a couple years, I still regularly come upon occasions where I wished it were possible. Find and Replace is currently the only alternative. It works, but it is quite slow by comparison.

Here is an example thread where we kicked up some discussion:

 

[Gideon S]

Yes, this feature would be so helpful. In InDesign when I deleted a style it asked if I wanted to replace with another style, keep the formatting, remove formatting, etc. But in Publisher it just deletes it. (You can detach the style from the formatting first, if you want to keep it.)

I am working on a project with several similar segments that I use separate documents for. When I copy and paste something from another document, even if the text styles are the exact same name and same style as one contained in the destination document, it still creates a duplicate text style. So now I have a messy list of text styles to work with. But if I could delete the additional styles and replace them with the old ones there would be no duplicates. Another options may be to ask to replace text styles with the same name?

[Alfred Beschle]

Thanks for your message. I think it could be helpful to share a similar experience. I really do hope that at Serif.com they pick up suggestions like these and try to work on it and improve this feature. The same problem seems to appear with colors. If inadvertantly colors are defined as RGB instead of CMYK (for a printing project) or identical colors with different names are imported from another project,  it should also be more easy to replace and redefine colors. What I would’nt miss at all is is that feature of rotating the work sheet which to me makes no sense at all! Apart from that I'm very, very fond of the entire affinity suite and do hope they keep on and, hopefully, do not end up in a Adobe-like monthly payment subscription… 😱

[Gideon S]

Agreed! When working with large projects it would be super helpful to have these features. I did use find and replace to substitute character styles, not sure if it works for colors (probably not). But I am so grateful for Affinity too, certainly can’t complain. 

[Christina Klaffinger]

Same thing with me!
I REALLY REALLY miss a possibility to make publisher use the style already in the document if the style name is identical.
I miss the possibility to replace a style with a different one, when deleting it. Same with colours.
These problems consume all the time I saved with other well working features.
 

[Old Bruce]

8 minutes ago, Christina Klaffinger said:

I REALLY REALLY miss a possibility to make publisher use the style already in the document if the style name is identical.

For this to happen I have found that the two styles (the one in Publisher document A and the one from wherever) have to be identical with all the various options, not just the name. Frequently I just use the Format option  in the find and replace panel to find and replace Style 1 with Style

[Christina Klaffinger]

Thanks, Bruce. And sure, I do that too: find and replace. But it is an annoying workaround and, if something has to be added later on, I have to find and replace again.

As for the need to have the whole style identical: I don't want to have to change the word styles according to the affinity file before including the word text - I always use the same word template to write the text for different affinity files which use different designs, Just the names are always the same. I want it to work with the style names - it always did in Indesign.
And this is what I ask from affinity-developers: To give users an option when importing formatted text.

[Old Bruce]

3 hours ago, Christina Klaffinger said:

And this is what I ask from affinity-developers: To give users an option when importing formatted text.

That would be great. I would like to be able to map imported styling to Styles already present in the document or make a new Style for the document.

[Alfred Beschle]

Thank you all for your advice and comments. But I think  there must be more users in the publisher community who should utter their opinions just to make the affinity team to work on this topic. It is REALLY boring to constantly look up and compare similar styles. In my case I was creating a book with 14 chapters of different topics (both text and pictures) where, while working on it, new text styles were to be defined; sometimes it turned out, that certain pages had to be altered and moved to other, previous chapters and thus identical styles existed with 2 or 3 different names…

I am just a user so I don't know how much efforts it possibly takes to insert such a feature. But it would be much more helpful than something like „rotating the work sheet " which (as applied usually inadvertantly) in my opinion is just a superflous gimmick…

 

[Christina Klaffinger]

@Alfred Beschle
You are so right!
What COULD we do to make ourselves heard with the developers? Is there any voting possibility for example?

I'm retired now, doing only occasional design work, and mainly for a charity project in Nepal. I have been working for a gifted education organisation for more than 10 years, doing all their print and web design for them, and for 25 years I taught layout and graphic design at high school. We always used Adobe software in both institutions, and I loved Adobe- until they introduced their cutthroat obligatory software-abos. Now both institutions are THINKING about changing to affinity and they asked for my experiences. I tell them, it is very promising indeed, but I have to make them aware of the problems I still face in using affinity programs.
(There are some more issues I'd like to know what other people think about - I'll need some spare time to check out if they are already covered in some thread)

[Alfred Beschle]

Same with me! Retired an only occasionally doing layout jobs. Mac user since 1988 (!) starting with Pagemaker, RagTime, Quark Xpess and almost finally Indesign. Skipped Indesign for financial reasons and didn’t expect too much from Affinity but was surprised by its features. Limitations like the one we've mentioned I came across only while working with the app. Wouldn't like to switch back, just hoping for further updates where problems will be solved. It's the same with colors finding and replacing RGB and CMYK definitions… and maybe a few more I haven’t come across yet…

 

[HJ-design]

Hi, I'm new to the Affinity software platform and just downloaded Affinity Publisher to replace Quark Xpress. I work daily with page layout and I have extensive experience, and many thousands of files, in Quark format. I came to the forum looking for insights on transitioning to the Affinity Publisher platform.

The information in this conversation is very important to my work-flow. Thank you for the heads-up and the work around!

I use the Delete Style Sheet "A" and Replace with Style Sheet "B" function many times per day. So, without question, I would like to see this feature added to Affinity Publisher.  -- If an Affinity Developer wonders how and why I use this feature: I work with products that are marketed simultaneously by different brand names. Each brand has it's own unique graphic identity. These graphic identity standards are maintained, in part, by applying unique Style Sheets to all text. - When I need to move the contents of a technical manual from one brand's layout to a different brand's layout, I delete each style sheet associated with the first brand and replace it with unique style sheets used by the second brand.

 

 

 

 

[Old Bruce]

32 minutes ago, HJ-design said:

I use the Delete Style Sheet "A" and Replace with Style Sheet "B" function many times per day. So, without question, I would like to see this feature added to Affinity Publisher. 

For now you can use the Find and Replace just using the A for the find and the B for the replace.

[HJ-design]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

For now you can use the Find and Replace just using the A for the find and the B for the replace.

Thank you, that's what I'll do for now. 

I have much to learn. Is there a manual for Affinity Publisher or is that a "missing feature"?
I found the Getting Started PDF and their learning videos, but I like to RTFM. 🙂

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, HJ-design said:

Is there a manual for Affinity Publisher or is that a "missing feature"?

The Help constitutes the official documentation, along with the tutorials.

There was a Workbook, which might still be available on Amazon or other sources but is no longer available directly from Serif. It's not a manual, but has an overview of the functions and a set of sample projects with explanations and resources so you can follow along.

[HJ-design]

Thank you for your reply and for the information.

Edited May 19, 2022 by HJ-design