How to roll back to previous version.

[Lillias]

Please excuse my ignorance but I have searched for an answer to this to no avail. I have seen in various threads people who are having problems with an update to say, for example, Affinity Photo and saying they will roll back to the previous version...can someone tell me how you do that please.

 

[walt.farrell]

It's covered in the FAQ, @Lillias:

 

[Lillias]

For some reason I was thinking it would be more complicated than that but that's fine.  Thanks very much for your quick response much appreciated.

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome.

I just noticed that the FAQ did not mention that on Windows you'll need to uninstall the new release before installing the older one. 

And you may end up losing Assets, Brushes, etc. that you've installed.

[DrScardo]

Pretty useless then for those who bought from the App Store.

Latest version is so unstable I had to start a trial with Adobe just to edit a project that I can no longer access through AfPub - and NO support replies to several posts. Fed up.

[walt.farrell]

32 minutes ago, DrScardo said:

Pretty useless then for those who bought from the App Store.

Yes. For you, restoring from an appropriate backup would be required, unless the older version would open in Trial mode.

[DrScardo]

One of the pitfalls of buying from the App Store - if the company doesn't release totally stable versions we're screwed as we cannot roll-back. I did the update because it looked as if they'd sorted some of the PDF issues, how wrong was I -  Cannot use AfPub at the moment and likely will find an alternative as it's now out of commission for a week, far too long for me to be forgiving. Especially as there's no direct support system. I guess that's why it's so reasonably priced, which is fine when it works, but a nightmare when it doesn't as everything just grinds to a halt and you've no idea when things might get sorted. 

[Dan C]

Hi @DrScardo,

15 minutes ago, DrScardo said:

Especially as there's no direct support system

Our technical support team are available directly via affinitysupport@serif.com, or here on the Affinity Forums - I'm certainly sorry to hear you feel this way.

I can see you tried using our latest beta version as recommended in this thread - from your response there it sounds as though the beta opened for you, but you are having issues whilst editing the files.

Can you please navigate to Affinity Publisher Beta > Preferences > Performance and provide a screenshot of your settings here for me?

Can you also please confirm for me:

• Are these issues occurring in one specific document, or in any document, including a new file?
• What are your mac specs, and what version of macOS are you running?

Many thanks in advance!

[DrScardo]

Thanks for your reply - I didn't know about the support e mail.

 

Here's the screen shot as requested - tbh I haven't touched the settings, all default.

In answer to your questions: I hadn't tried loading an earlier document, especially as it was crashing and would only let me close via Force Quit - and then open the last used crashed doc (though I have done the CTRL start up and cleared data). I'm reluctant to waste time recreating this doc importing one by one each of 230 PDFs at this point, as in the earlier and the beta in which I did this, all seems fine until a save & quit, then once reloaded the app just cannot handle it. I had no problem importing the same PDFs (split into separate pages via dragged using Mac Preview) into the Amazon Kindle Creator app. CORRECTION - just remembered and checked - of course Kindle Creator imports the entire PDF file, which in this case was the earlier version I'd managed to export from AfPub, before I spotted the error and tried unsuccessfully to re-edit in Pub, so I imported that master PDF into a trial version of Adobe Acrobat DC, where I edited the offending texts, and then exported to a final master PDF.

I thought at first it was the PDFs exported using PDFSam (far quicker using "split" function than dragging every page from Preview), and indeed when I finally got one of the attempts to load and ran preflight it flagged up the non-compatible v1.7 PDFs, so I reverted to dragged PDFs (these are v1.3) but this made no difference.

I haven't got an older AfPub project to hand to test, there was a similar songbook but with only around 45 pages I did in an earlier version - maybe 6 months ago, which also used dragged PDFs - I had no problems with that one.

Mac Pro (Mid 2012), 3,46 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon, 32 GB 1333 MHz DDR3, Radeon RX 560 4 GB. OS 10.14.6

 

[Dan C]

Many thanks for the screenshot and information provided!

Firstly, can you please try changing the following settings for me:

View Quality - set this to Nearest Neighbour 

Display - set this to Metal

Retina Rendering - set this to Low Quality (fastest)

Hardware Acceleration  - untick this option.

Restart the app as prompted once you've changed these settings and then try loading/editing your document once again - does this improve the responsiveness of Affinity for you?

With that many PDFs placed in your document, Publisher will have to do a lot of calculating and rendering depending on the task you're performing. Can you please confirm for me, are these PDFs linked or embedded?

[DrScardo]

Thanks, already tried most of that after your first reply - all parameters now as you suggested, slower response, tried swapping out the page that had the text error in it and the visual is now frozen - if I try to line up the box in the frame it doesn't move the pdf image, but the outline moves. Before it would place properly but then freeze, as you can see from screenshot, pages panel is blank, as it has been since problem began 

[DrScardo]

and trying to save as greets me with spinning ball and a force quit to exit.

[Dan C]

Thanks for trying that for me and I'm certainly sorry to hear this!

I believe this is an issue with your document, rather than a more generic issue with the application here.

20 hours ago, Dan C said:

With that many PDFs placed in your document, Publisher will have to do a lot of calculating and rendering depending on the task you're performing. Can you please confirm for me, are these PDFs linked or embedded?

I can see in your screenshot that at least the 2 PDFs shown are embedded, assuming the rest of your document is following this, that means you have over 230 PDF files that Affinity Publisher has to 'load' at once when opening / editing this document.

I must be honest and say I am not overly surprised that this document is slow to respond due the above. Imagine opening 230 PDFs in Preview at the same time on your Mac and how long this would take to respond.

You should be using linked resources for multiple reasons, as this should use less RAM, put less of a load on your CPU and reduce the file size (again this is also likely why you are having trouble saving here too).

You can find out more about linked vs embedded in the below links - 

https://affinityspotlight.com/article/affinity-publisher-to-embed-or-to-link-files/

https://affinity.serif.com/tutorials/publisher/desktop/video/337294349/

https://affinity.help/publisher/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Media/embeddingVsLinking.html?title=Embedding vs linking

Can you please upload a copy of your .afpub file to the below link for me, so that I can look into this further here? I'd like to see if we can 'repair' this document and return it to a working state for you.

https://www.dropbox.com/request/440i82kix6l7WZ6thbzm

Once uploaded, please reply here to let me know. Many thanks in advance!

[DrScardo]

Only just seen this so will sort file to upload, but the reason I've embedded is because AfPub doesn't like importing separate (or is even capable of?) PDFs - I have to import them page by page. If I try adding a PDF from file it doesn't no allow me to edit or place / line up in any way.

Preview has no problem displaying 230 pages of PDF. It may be that Affinity has a problem with 230 separate PDFs but they are only one page each. If AfPub allowed me to import them properly without this tedious separating into single pages that'd be great. 

I've tried change the embedded files to linked but the program has frozen again.

[walt.farrell]

36 minutes ago, DrScardo said:

If AfPub allowed me to import them properly without this tedious separating into single pages that'd be great. 

It does. But each time you Place a PDF you must choose exactly one page to display, using the Context Toolbar. So if you want 230 pages from a PDF, and you're Placing it, you'll need to Place it 230 times and survive different pages Or Place it once and duplicate that Publisher page, and change the PDF page on each.

Or you could directly Open the PDF of you have all the fonts installed, rather than using Place. Or use Document > Add Pages from File.

[DrScardo]

I guess I don't understand why when I add "from file" it converts it all to curves, but maybe this is better for me? I've just checked against the template imported into the Master and the boundaries are as they should be so I have no real need to move the pages if they import this way. Is this a more efficient way of using PDFs in AfPub?

I just tried the linked way and that seems to be working but I cannot see how to update a link, saved and closed the app but re-opened having edited the linked PDF and it did not change. Also looking at Resource manager it only shows the first four pages of the doc.

Thanks

[Old Bruce]

42 minutes ago, DrScardo said:

Preview has no problem displaying 230 pages of PDF. It may be that Affinity has a problem with 230 separate PDFs but they are only one page each. If AfPub allowed me to import them properly without this tedious separating into single pages that'd be great. 

 

So you want the 230 pages from a particular PDF.

open it in Designer, you'll have 230 artboards and you can export each needed one as a one page pdf.

[walt.farrell]

13 minutes ago, DrScardo said:

I guess I don't understand why when I add "from file" it converts it all to curves,

It shouldn't, and doesn't for me. You would need to provide sample files to demonstrate what's going on.

[DrScardo]

No I don't want 230 pages of a particular PDF, I want a total of 230 pages from 19 PDFs, each of the PDFs is a musical score, exported from a scoring program. I want each score complete incorporated into one document, with title pages etc index - all the graphic and DTP elements that are not available in the Scoring program, but are giving me such a headache here in AfPub.

As for exporting one by one in Designer, what a pain! I can use PDFSam to do that (except that AfPub won't play nicely with the 1.7 version it outputs) or I can drag from Preview. PDFSam is far quicker of course but cannot use in AfPub, Preview is as slow but probably quicker than messing about with 230 artboards in Designer (and on performance of AfPub I wouldn't hold my breath that 230 pages in Designer wouldn't crash...)

Looks like "add from file" is workable as my PDFs are already formatted correctly for margins etc. Only problem now is how to get it to see an updated PDF, surely this should happen automatically in the background?

I should add that I'm a composer musical not a graphic designer or DTP expert - I simply want to stitch the PDFs together and add the relevant artwork and text, index etc. Having used Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop for years to successfully create dozens of album covers etc, I came to Affinity because I don't like subscription models and my Adobe package is now obsolete. I don't want to have to learn any more skills than absolutely necessary to get the (not at all complex) jobs done. I innocently thought that importing several PDFs into AfPub, writing the index and title pages etc, adding a few graphics or pix here and there, would be a piece of cake. My MacPro handles hundreds of GB of multitrack music files and DSP hungry audio plugins in the creation of my music projects, so I'm rather surprised to see this app fall over at 85 megabytes of data in a saved file - of course the music files aren't embedded but even so it seems a little odd that a saved 85mb file should clog up my Mac in AfPub.

[DrScardo]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

It shouldn't, and doesn't for me. You would need to provide sample files to demonstrate what's going on.

Ah sorry not curves, but editable in a way that the embedded PDFs were not. That's fine (I guess) for the text parts of the doc but not good if the score itself accidentally gets moved / edited or in some other way changed. But I guess it's OK, I just wasn't used to seeing a text box or item box around anything that I touch on the screen with "add from file" used.

[Old Bruce]

6 minutes ago, DrScardo said:

As for exporting one by one in Designer, what a pain! ....

 

Use the export persona.

[DrScardo]

2 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Use the export persona.

Thanks for that but see my other post re - not wanting to have to learn any more skills than I need. I don't even know what a Persona is. I've managed without one for so long......! Anyway I think "add from file" is my my new best friend. It's a simple layout job that I do with these music scores and lord knows it takes me long enough to create the original PDFs without having to learn a new program to put it all together, but thanks for your suggestions.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, DrScardo said:

Anyway I think "add from file" is my my new best friend

But it is unlikely to work well for music scores. Placing PDF pages individually is usually the way to go there. This does not mean you need each page in a separate PDF. You can choose the page you want after you Place the PDF, using the controls in the Context Toolbar.

[DrScardo]

18 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

But it is unlikely to work well for music scores. Placing PDF pages individually is usually the way to go there. This does not mean you need each page in a separate PDF. You can choose the page you want after you Place the PDF, using the controls in the Context Toolbar.

Hmm, in what way is this not likely to work well for scores? I've rebuilt the document using add from file, and output a PDF final, (which oddly enough I see is PDF version 1.7 - so whilst AfPub won't play well with embedded 1.7 it does export them...) and to be honest I cannot tell the difference in quality in the final output from a/ the version I managed to export from AfPub using embedded PDFs, and b/ the source PDFs exported from Musescore @ 360 dpi. The former (after editing a bit of text in my trial version of Adobe DC) I sent to print at Lulu.com and Amazon and have had a copy back that looks absolutely fine. I've dragged the same page from all three to post here - anything stand out about any of them that is not suitable for print? It'd be good to know as I cannot see anything untoward! Interestingly the latest version using add from file is a lot larger file size for the single dragged page than the others, yet the complete exported PDF is only 4.5 MB against 7.2 for the Acrobat edited export, and 85MB for the original AfPub PDF export. I cannot see where these big differences in file size is affecting the visual, but maybe my eyes just don't know where to look.

 

Clean 6 - linked (dragged).pdf CLEAN 5 rev1 (dragged).pdf Falling Rain US (dragged).pdf

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, DrScardo said:

in what way is this not likely to work well for scores?

I've seen a number of reports that even with the proper specialized music fonts installed, errors occur in the layout. One big reason for implementing Passthrough mode was to allow Placing of PDF files without such issues. But that won't apply when Opening a PDF or using Add Pages From File. Only Placing the PDF is likely to work well.