Affinity Publisher crashing too often

[vdamjanovski]

Affinity Publisher on my Intel MacBook Pro, running Monterey OS (v.12.1) crashes too often while I am working on my major new book (close to 600pages).

The crashing happens typically when holding the Shift key and highlighting text during editing with the left arrow (at least this is what I have noticed far).

I have reported this crashing to Apple number of times, via their automated Crash screen, but I am worried, as it happens too often, at least doesn’t times in a day of work. I loose hours of work if I don’t save every few seconds, but some times I forget.

This is a very important book I have contract to finish it within six months, but I am very worried.

I have relatively new 16” MacBookPro (2019), with Intel processor, but only one year old, plenty of RAM (32Gb), 2.4GHz 8-core Intel Core i9 and working with 2TB SSD. The Graphic is Intel UHD 630.

The below PDF contain a copy-paste from the automatic report that the OSX brings after crashing.

I would kindly ask Serif to analyse the report below and let me know if there is anything you can suggest for me to do to avoid, or at least minimise this annoying and concerning issue.

Thank you kindly.

Affinity Publisher crashing issue.pdf

[Dan C]

Hi @vdamjanovski,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble & our sincerest apologies for the delayed response here, we were extremely busy over the Christmas period and working from home during the pandemic is unfortunately extending our response window to be longer than normal, many thanks for your continued patience and understanding here.

This issue may be caused by your macOS disk permissions, can you please try repairing these using the instructions at the below link? 

https://tweaklibrary.com/repair-disk-permissions-mac/

If this does not help, can you please confirm for me:

• Does this happen in one document, or multiple?
• What font is in use at the time?

We're aware of a few issues with Affinity and macOS Monterey and this may be causing the crashes you're reporting. Therefore I'd like to recommend our latest beta version where we've tentatively fixed these issues. You can find the beta below, which can be installed alongside your retail version, so that you have 2 versions of the Affinity app installed at once -

Please do let me know how you get on here

[vdamjanovski]

Thank you Dan C for your response, I really appreciate it.

I will try and install your Beta and will test it.

Before that however, I want to tell you that I just ran the Disk Utility, and I got the following unexpected message:

Running First Aid on “Backups” (disk1s1)

Checking file system and repairing if necessary and if possible.
Volume could not be unmounted.
Restoring the original state found as mounted.
The repair cannot be performed because one or more volumes are mounted. : (-69565)

Operation failed…

Now, just let me clarify that I save my book-work on the second partition of my 2TB SSD drive. So although I call it "Backup" it is not an external drive, but rather just a second partition. I prefer to keep all my App software on the main Mac SSD parition of 1TB, and dedicate my second partition of 1TB on the same SSD as working files.

Could this be the reason for it?

Thanks again.

[Dan C]

No problem at all, please do let us know how you get on with the beta

I would certainly be surprised if this is what's causing Publisher to crash - but it's not impossible. 

If you have the document stored locally and follow the steps that usually cause the crash, do you see this still happens?

[vdamjanovski]

Hi Dan C,

Strange enough, I was working almost a week with the Affinity Publisher Beta without any crash issue, and I was literally intending to write to you earlier today that I was happy with the Beta. 

BUT...

Just about five minutes ago, during working with my book, and exactly as I experienced prior crashes - when using the arrows keys to go between words in text editing - I got the first crash of the Beta version !

I am enclosing the PDF which I composed from the Mac OSX report and I am attaching it.

Despite the sad news, I am happy as I do not experience the multiple crashes I have been experiencing with the full previous version.

So, not sure what are the internal differences between the two, but it seems there is something that is different and "better" if I may say so, because I don't have that many frequent crashes. 

I have been researching about the previously reported "First Aid" issue, but I can't change my partition for the purpose of finding the issue (if this is causing the crashes). But on the other hand, this cannot be the issue, as your Beta version had no crashes until today, while using the same SSD partition of my files location.

Please let me know if there is anything else I could try on your behalf and help solve my problem.

AffinityPublisherBeta crash-1.pdf

[Dan C]

Thanks for the update, I'm sorry to hear the beta has crashed for you - but I'm certainly glad to hear the general performance of the app has improved.

Being a beta version it's expected that the application may crash occasionally, and from your crash report there does not appear to be any selectively specific reason for this crash. I can see there was a selection in regards to the text tool, but other than this there isn't much information for me to go on.

I'll be sure to provide our QA/Dev team with this crash report now, as they will be able to debug this further and continue to improve the beta version using this

In regards to your First Aid error, I believe I understand why you're seeing this - as your internal drive is a singular SSD split into 2 partitions, one with your OS installed, First Aid actually has to 'unmount' the drive, essentially disconnecting it from the mac.

Due to your OS being part of this drive (even on a separate partition) unmounting the SSD would also unmount the OS, causing macOS to crash and potentially be unrecoverable. Disk Aid is failing to perform the health check to ensure that the OS is not unmounted.

In this scenario you may wish to try a third party disk health checker application that does not unmount the drive, however as the beta is performing better for you - it may not be required!

[vdamjanovski]

Thank you Dan C, 

Sounds we are getting somewhere.

Thanks for the First Aid error suggestion.

That makes sense now too, because I already tried the "external" check by using the Command+R recovery mode of the OSX itself, and it did check this second partition to be OK.

I will be looking forward to the official A. Publisher update release, but if your team wants some more info I am happy to provide.

Cheers.

[vdamjanovski]

Hi again Dan C,

Today I got another crash with the Affinity Publisher Beta you offered me to test.

I have been working every day for at least 8hrs each day, and this is the second crash, after the first one reported on Sunday, four days ago.

I am attaching the PDF of the rash report, and it happened during the text editing highlight selection, like all previous ones.

This time I used left Shift + Right arrow (in the past it was most of the time Shift + Left Arrow).

Thanks.

Affinity Publisher Beta crash 2.pdf

[Dan C]

Many thanks for updating me here, it's certainly interesting that this is happening less frequently with the beta version - but seeming there may be an external factor causing this that I haven't yet pinpointed, as I'm not able to replicate this crashing here currently.

Can you please confirm for me:

• What font is mainly in use in your document?
• What language is the document in?
• I appreciate you are editing a specific document currently, but if you start a new file, are you able to replicate this crashing?

Many thanks once again

[vdamjanovski]

Answers to your questions Dan C

- Most common fonts are Times and Times New Roman for text and headings, and Helvetica for graphic and illustrations. I have had experience in the past with various uncommon fonts, and try to keep these to minimum.

- The language is English (Australian dictionary) and using Australian keyboard layout.

- This is actually a very large file (book) of over 600 pages, with lots of illustrations (all of which are either Designer format or simply PNG or JPG exports) and photos. My previous book was originally written in InDesign, but I had other issues with InDesign (other than the cost) so I converted it to Publisher, page by page, by copying and pasting the text contents from a PDF export of InDesign. I have created all the chapters and headings correctly in order to produce Contents and Index (which work well). So these crashes are the only issue I am experiencing so far. I have been thinking of highlighting text for editing by using mouse only, instead of Shift+arrows, but I find it slow. I might however try it until the next crash...

For your additional information, I just made another small test today, and I opened the last saved file which I worked on until yesterday with the Beta version (remember the last crash I had with Beta was as reported about 5 days ago). Today I opened your official last release (1.10.4) and within literally 5 minutes I had a crash when I started working on the text. Again, the crash happened when I used Shift + some of the arrow keys used to highlight the main body text. 

I made a copy and paste PDF of the OSX report, attached.

 

Affinity Publisher crash x.pdf

[Dan C]

Thank you for verifying that for me - it certainly sounds as though this is easily reproducible in your document, so I'd like to request a copy of this for testing here.

Could you please provide a copy of the .afpub file to the below link for me?

https://www.dropbox.com/request/D49ilpfi5lKawMr2U9mW

I appreciate there are a multitude of images also, however as the crashing is whilst editing text I don't require these currently

[vdamjanovski]

Sure Dan C,

I will provide a copy of the earlier versions, which were crashing "more often" and also because of the copyright issue.

I have complete trust in Serif, but I am under contractual obligation with my publisher, so please keep this only for your internal analysis.

In the mean-time, FYI, I just had another crash just ten minutes ago using the official v.1.10.4, after using Shift+arrow text selection. 

This is two days after the previously reported on Tuesday (1 Feb 2022).

Mind you I have been working throughout most hours of the last two days, as with the previous crashes.

If you need to contact me more quickly (as I don't really read the forum always), feel free to use my direct e-mail: vlado@vidilabs.com

Thanks.

Affinity Publisher crash xy.pdf

[vdamjanovski]

Hi Dan C,

Uploading a copy of the book right now, probably will take another 15 min.

I had to upload the complete work, with graphics embedded so that you can see if you can reproduce the crashes.

I would appreciate if you let me know when you receive it and please remove it from the DropBox after that.

Thank you kindly.

[Dan C]

Many thanks for providing this for me, of course I will be sure to keep this file private  (and might I just say what a great looking book!)

I've been testing this issue internally and thus far I've been unable to replicate the crashing behaviour, therefore I am escalating it to our QA team with copies of your crash reports.

Once I have further information to share, I'll be sure to reply here. Many thanks for your continued patience and understanding!

[vdamjanovski]

Hi Dan C,

Thanks for the info and your persistence.

Because the crash doesn’t occur at known intervals, i suggest the best way is somebody to just pretend to edit the main text by selecting small sections of the main text with Shift and left arrow (most often), and then change it. Then go to another page and do the same.
 

Maybe learn a bit of CCTV on the way :-).

in any case, i do appreciate your support and lets hope you will find the issue.

I will keep working using the non-beta version and if you want me to, i can keep collecting further crash reports, if you think that is useful.

Thanks again

[CanneH]

I am also having issues with 1.10.4 of Affinity Publisher crashing. It has crashed three times in the past 24 hours. I'd be happy to share the document if it would be helpful for debugging. The document has some large image files in it. I created the new document this week, copied in parts from another document and imported styles from yet another document. 

[vdamjanovski]

Thanks CanneH,

I am glad you could reproduce it.

The image files are very important part of my book, both the photos and drawings.

Maybe it will help if i tell you that some photos are very old, some are in JPG others in PNG. The illustrations are in A Designer.

Maybe, it is a particular format that causes the crash?

But this somehow doesn’t make sense as it happens (at least to me) only when highlighting text to edit.

Anyhow, feel free to share it and modify it among your programmers, as long as no copy is made from it and given to outsiders please. This is my copyright obligation.

i appreciate very much all you are doing and I will be glad when this is fixed.

I love and use your programs since day 1, and very happy with the overall experience.

thank you and take care

[vdamjanovski]

Hi CanneH, please disregard my previous comment, I thought you are one of the Affinity developers, whom I am talking to also.

But thanks for the info, hopefully the Affinity developers will find the cause easier now.

[Dan C]

Hi @CanneH,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble!

In order to keep threads 'tidy' here on the forums, can you please create a new post regarding your file (unless you file is crashing specifically when selecting text using Shift + arrow keys) so that our team can investigate this separately? You can start a new thread from the link below -

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/5-affinity-on-desktop-questions-mac-and-windows/&do=add

Many thanks in advance

 

18 hours ago, vdamjanovski said:

Because the crash doesn’t occur at known intervals, i suggest the best way is somebody to just pretend to edit the main text by selecting small sections of the main text with Shift and left arrow (most often), and then change it. Then go to another page and do the same.

I agree, our developers have taken a closer look into your file and crash reports and it appears as though there are memory shortage errors occurring, so I suspect I may only be able to replicate this during an extending 'editing session' - again I'll be sure to update you here as we proceed!

[vdamjanovski]

Thank you Dan C, very appreciated.

[PaoloT]

I would also try restarting the Mac in Recovery mode (Cmd-R while booting), and run Disk Utility from there. Since the apparently damaged partition is in the main drive, it could be impossible to repair it in normal mode.

Paolo

 

[vdamjanovski]

I already done that Paolo, and no issues were detected (it is a single 2TB SSD drive, partitioned in two 1TB), but thanks for suggestion.

[vdamjanovski]

@ Dan C :

Here is another crash report dump, after 3 days work...

It could well be connected with a memory leakage.

Today worked for about 6 hours, and it happened just now...

Affinity Publisher crash xy+1.pdf

[Dan C]

Many thanks for your continued patience here @vdamjanovski!

Our developers have taken a further look into this file and it's not currently 100% clear of the exact cause for this issue - so they have requested that I log the file directly with them for further testing in a 'dev build', which essentially forces the app to stay open (where possible) even after 'crashing'.

This should allow them to better understand the cause of this and work to fix it for a future update. In the meantime as you've mentioned you may want to continue selecting text with your mouse.

Should you have any further questions or information to add, please don't hesitate 

[Petar Petrenko]

On 2/1/2022 at 1:12 AM, vdamjanovski said:

My previous book was originally written in InDesign, but I had other issues with InDesign (other than the cost) so I converted it to Publisher, page by page, by copying and pasting the text contents from a PDF export of InDesign.

I think it would be much safer and faster if you exported the ID file into IDML than PDF.