[Affinity Publisher] Figure Numbering

[Felix Z.]

Dear Affinity Support Forum, 

I am trying to find a feature that allows me to automatically number my figures / images / tables that I added to my text to reference them and to add them to my table of figures. I couldnt find a tutorial on this topic and my search in this forum hasnt been too succesfull as I could only find this older entry from 2018. Is there a way to number images like I can number my pages?

All the best,
Felix

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @Felix Z.

There is no specific figure/image/table numbering functionality in Publisher.
You might (possibly, in some way that I've not tried myself) be able to use a separate TOC/Index to do what you want (or some other ‘workaround’) but that might be trickier than just doing it manually.

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, Felix Z. said:

I am trying to find a feature that allows me to automatically number my figures / images / tables that I added to my text to reference them and to add them to my table of figures. I couldnt find a tutorial on this topic and my search in this forum hasnt been too succesfull as I could only find this older entry from 2018. Is there a way to number images like I can number my pages?

You can define a paragraph text style for a caption line below your figures, and call it whatever you want. Here I've used Figure Numbers in Body as the paragraph text style name. Then in the Bullets and Numbering section you need to assign the numbering text that will be used (e.g., "Figure \#"), and a global name for the number so it can increment throughout the document. Note that the numbers will run sequentially throughout the document (though you could change that), and on each page will increment within each text frame, and from the bottom up in the Layers panel. That is, when you create a text frame for the figure caption, and then create another one on that page, the one that is lower in the Layers panel will have a lower number than the one that is higher in the Layers panel.

You can later create a TOC to act as a list of Figures, and in that TOC you can include the paragraph text style that you used in the figure captions. This will automatically pick up the related figure number as part of the TOC text.

Here's how I set up the paragraph text style for the example .afpub document below:

I happened to use the same Name in the Bullets and Numbering as I did for the paragraph text style name. That is not required; the style name and the bullet/number name are not related.

Here's a very simple sample .afpub document, with a TOC and several figure captions (though no figures as yet).

figure-numbering-sample.afpub

[Felix Z.]

I have read about and tried the paragraph text style feature but only understood it now, thank you so much for the sample document!
All the best,
Felix

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome, Felix.

[Daniel Vrbík]

On 4/2/2022 at 3:38 PM, walt.farrell said:

You can define a paragraph text style for a caption line below your figures, and call it whatever you want. Here I've used Figure Numbers in Body as the paragraph text style name. Then in the Bullets and Numbering section you need to assign the numbering text that will be used (e.g., "Figure \#")...

Great solution, thank you Walt! But what if I want to use different numbering in chapters with chapter numbers? For example, Fig. 1.1, Fig. 1.2, Fig. 1.3, Fig, 2.1, Fig. 2.2 etc. Is it possible?

Thanks, Daniel

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Daniel Vrbík said:

Great solution, thank you Walt! But what if I want to use different numbering in chapters with chapter numbers? For example, Fig. 1.1, Fig. 1.2, Fig. 1.3, Fig, 2.1, Fig. 2.2 etc. Is it possible?

You're welcome.

I would have to experiment to see if there is anything other than a manual possibility for that case. I'll see if I can come up with something.

[walt.farrell]

On 6/9/2023 at 6:05 AM, Daniel Vrbík said:

Great solution, thank you Walt! But what if I want to use different numbering in chapters with chapter numbers? For example, Fig. 1.1, Fig. 1.2, Fig. 1.3, Fig, 2.1, Fig. 2.2 etc. Is it possible?

I think you have to do it manually, today, with different Bullets and Numbering settings. E.g., for the items in chapter 1, use "Fig. 1." for the text before the number, and for chapter 2 use "Fig. 2."

We'll see what the Cross-References function brings us in 2.2. Perhaps it will allow something more automatic (but perhaps not).

[Daniel Vrbík]

15 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I think you have to do it manually, today, with different Bullets and Numbering settings. E.g., for the items in chapter 1, use "Fig. 1." for the text before the number, and for chapter 2 use "Fig. 2."

We'll see what the Cross-References function brings us in 2.2. Perhaps it will allow something more automatic (but perhaps not).

It's a pity but ok I will do it manually. Thanks for trying!

[jimrome]

Can I use a 2-row table to do this, top row containing the figure, and bottom row containing the caption?

[walt.farrell]

27 minutes ago, jimrome said:

Can I use a 2-row table to do this, top row containing the figure, and bottom row containing the caption?

That should work, but is perhaps more complex than you'd need. I don't see why a Table would be required.

[jimrome]

The table keeps the image and its caption together.

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, jimrome said:

The table keeps the image and its caption together.

Thanks. I misunderstood your question.

It would usually prove simpler, I think, to simply Group the image (or better, a Picture Frame) and the caption.

[Mary Neale]

 

Hi

I fixed the table and figure settings, thanks for your posted replies Walt.

I now need to fix table of contents alignments. Could someone advise please?

 

Many thanks, Mary

table alignments.docx

[Mary Neale]

Hi

Figure numbers have gone out of sequence

This is happening on each page. How do I correct the sequence please?

Many thanks, Mary

 

Figure numbers have gone out of sequence.docx

[MikeTO]

@Mary Neale For the TOC, select Text > Show Special Characters and you'll see that there are two tabs per line, one between the paragraph number and the text and one between the text and the page number. Your TOC text style likely has only one tab, for the page number. You need to add another tab to the TOC set to a value from the left edge of the frame that makes sense for the widest number in the list.

For the figure numbers, it is likely the layer stack order. Publisher numbers lists from the bottom of the layer stack to the top, so change the relative order of the two frames using the Layers panel and the numbers will change.

Good luck

PS: more people might respond to your post if you attached the screenshots directly to your forum post rather than adding them to MS Word files. Not everybody has MS Word or wants to download a file.

[Mary Neale]

Thank you Mike

I'm learning as someone never using any publishers and very much appreciate your help. Thanks for providing the manual, I've started to use it. This is the stage I got to but it doesn't appear to have made the desired change.

and then

And then

And finally -

Thank you so much

And now for layers ...

 

I hope to learn more. Any further advice? Many thanks, Mary

[MikeTO]

I'm glad you've sorted out the TOC issue.

For the Layers issue, watch this recording which illustrates how it works. Publisher numbers lists from the bottom to the top of the layer stack even for objects on different sizes of a spread.

 

 

[Mary Neale]

Thank you so much Mike

That's so helpful.

Best wishes, Mary

[Mary Neale]

Good morning

I'm now finding the figure numbers going from 2 to 11 without indicating whether it might be hidden layers although I deleted the page they were on in the past. Could they still be floating? So I tried to get global activated again but it seems that Figures 1-2 are not activated when selecting. I'm at a loss!

Can someone advise please? Best wishes, Mary

 

[walt.farrell]

Can you share your actual Publisher document (.afpub), or at least a subset document that has the problem? That would make it much easier to diagnose.

[Mary Neale]

Dear Walt

I have removed images for copyright reasons.

Please do take a look at the attached but I would ask that it is removed from the online system onc the query has been resolved.

Best wishes, Mary

 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Mary Neale said:

but I would ask that it is removed from the online system onc the query has been resolved

If you have that concern, I think you should consider editing your post (click the ... icon and choose Edit) and removing the attachment right now.

You can then wait for a Serif staff member to provide a private upload link for you. So far we're all just users here, and sharing the file publicly like that means anyone in the world could have a copy of it.

[MikeTO]

There are some structural issues with this document:

• If you zoom out from the document (with View > Show Text Flow selected), you will find extra text frames floating outside of each spread, the blue rectangles in the left screenshot. These are there because they exist on the Main Document master page as shown in the right screenshot. If nothing else, you must delete these from that master page.
   
• It's a facing-page document but has non-facing page masters. You can do this, but if you're linking text frames it's not the best approach.
• The master "Main Document", which is applied to both sides of each facing-page spread, has two text frames on it. The frames aren't linked which means that if you want to use them for flowing text on pages based on this master you will need to link them on each page. It's better to link them on the master page. Better yet, since they're on a single page and not a facing-page master, you could make them a single text frame with two columns.
• You've ignored the master page frames on your document pages and created new text frames on top of them. This can get very confusing so I suggest using frames on the master or frames on the document page, but not both. Note that frames inherited from the master page have X handles in the corners to indicate that they can't be modified on the document page while frames drawn on the document page have round size handles in the corners.

Before making any of those changes, start with the document you uploaded and search for paragraphs with your numbering format:

1. Open the Find and Replace panel
2. Click the Gear icon beside Find and choose Format from the menu
3. Click Bullets and Numbering on the left, set Type to numbering, and paste your figure numbering name (Figure Numbers in Body) into the Name field. Press Return and click OK.
4. Click the Find button and you'll see a list of all of the numbered paragraphs.

You reported that numbers jumped from 2 to 11. If you click the third result (an empty frame as shown by a section symbol) the right master page frame will be selected, as indicated by its X handles. You applied your figure numbering format to the empty text frame behind the document page frame you are using. Straightening out your master vs. document frames will sort this issue out, but for now, you could select the Body text style so it's no longer a numbered paragraph.

The next result is "Figure 3:  5.3       Conservation philosophy" on page 82 because Publisher numbers all the figures in a story (the text in a series of linked frames) before moving to the next object in a spread's layer stack. All of the remaining figure numbers before #11 follow this one. Note that the frame with #11 is at the top of the layer stack and is numbered after a figure on the right side of the spread. If you want it to be numbered before the one on the right side, move it below that frame in the layer stack. I suspect you know this and were just testing at this point.

Minor note: Figure 45 is in a frame that has vertical justification selected, so the lines of text are spread out vertically (justified). You likely want to change this to vertically aligned top like the other figure frames.

[Mary Neale]

Thank you Mike

I appreciate your help and I’ll work on this and post later today.

Best wishes Mary