Affinity Designer Unwanted White Background Color in Text Frames: A Solution.

[dmstudio]

Yeah, I'm making this a new post because searching through the manymany threads that already exist on it has been a huge waste of time.

Problem: Text frames in Affinity Designer inexplicably have a white background. No matter what the fill color or outline color of the text is, pasting, pasting without formatting, retyping text doesn't help. Every new text frame ALWAYS has a white background. There's no way to change it in the character studio and Designer doesn't have a text frame studio

Solution:

1. open a new blank document,
2. go back to the original,
3. delete all of your text layers,
4. copy the remaining layers and art boards,
5. go to the new document.
6. paste them into the new document.
7. Re-create all of your text boxes.

Why it happens: for me it was an issue caused by opening a template my printer needs me to use. Apparently the document was setup to have white backgrounds in text boxes and since Designer shows the background frame color but has no way to get rid of it, all of my text boxes had white backgrounds.

Other solution if you only have a couple text boxes:

1. Create a new shape layer,
2. set the background to transparent,
3. convert it to a text frame
4. then paste the text
5. repeat for every single text box 

I've found thread after thread about this issue here, on Reddit and elsewhere going back to 2019. Hey, Serif. It's been 3 years!  just quit showing text frame background color at all if you aren't going to give us any option to control it. 

[walt.farrell]

33 minutes ago, dmstudio said:

Why it happens: for me it was an issue caused by opening a template my printer needs me to use

You should probably talk to your printer about that

 

[pbasdf]

Does Edit -> Defaults -> Revert (or Edit -> Defaults -> Factory Reset) fix it?

 

[pbasdf]

It turns out the Text Frame Studio panel is available in AD, but just really hard to open: it's not listed in View -> Studio and not available from the Context Toolbar for Frame Text or Artistic Text.  But it is available from the Context Toolbar if you have Text on a Curve.  So, create a curve, then select the Artistic Text tool, and click on the curve to create the Artistic Text.  Now the Context Toolbar should include an option to open the Text Frame panel:

The panel will open

and can be docked and used any text frames, artistic text, text on a curve, etc.

 

[Old Bruce]

7 minutes ago, pbasdf said:

It turns out the Text Frame Studio panel is available in AD, but just really hard to open: it's not

My memory of this is that this is a bug and will most likely be fixed. Meaning we are not supposed to be able to do this and it may not be available in future versions. As I stated this is my memory which is not perfect.

[pbasdf]

2 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

My memory of this is that this is a bug and will most likely be fixed. Meaning we are not supposed to be able to do this and it may not be available in future versions. As I stated this is my memory which is not perfect.

Noted.  Thanks for the warning.  R C-R has just made the same point in another post, so your memory serves you well:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/161401-text-path-now-showing-black-stroked-path-under-text/&do=findComment&comment=917658

Odd that two people should post about issues with "text frames" doing things they shouldn't (strokes in one case, fills in the other) in AD within a few hours.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, pbasdf said:

Odd that two people should post about issues with "text frames" doing things they shouldn't (strokes in one case, fills in the other) in AD within a few hours.

One of them thinks they could have created the text frame in APub & later opened it in AD, or copied it & pasted it into an AD document.

[jubarbie]

EDIT: Ok just found out how to change that thanks to @pbasdf answer here. This is really odd that I have to open a contaxtual menu that is not present on my context but that has an effect on it. If the text frame panel has an impact on the Artistic Text tool then it should be possible to open it from that tool.

I have the same issue on a document.

Every text I create using the Art text tool or the Zone text tool has a pink background.

I don't get how to change it, I can't see any options

[MickRose]

I can create that behaviour if an original document was created in Publisher and then "Edit in Designer..." is used. Do you have Af Publisher?

[pixeldroid]

I've encountered this issue in AD 2.0.4

When I create a new text layer of any kind it has a white background.

I followed @pbasdf advice above to access the Text Frame Panel  by creating text on a curve. The Text Frame button shows up, but it doesn't open the panel. I don't see a fix outside of copying a block from a different document. This is bad.

[walt.farrell]

51 minutes ago, pixeldroid said:

I followed @pbasdf advice above to access the Text Frame Panel  by creating text on a curve. The Text Frame button shows up, but it doesn't open the panel. I don't see a fix outside of copying a block from a different document. This is bad.

Having the panel available in Designer was a bug. The button to invoke it shouldn't be there, either. 

Try selecting the text frame or text object, then Edit > Defaults > Revert. If that doesn't work, try Edit > Defaults > Factory Reset.

[pixeldroid]

@walt.farrell Revert worked. Thanks a ton for the quick reply!
The panel remains a bug on top of a property that shouldn't exist, though I think it would be great to be able to fill/stroke a Text Frame (pia to do it manually).

[nitro912gr]

had this popping to me today while working on an older file. revert did the trick, but shouldn't there be some short of fool prof setting in place to avoid that? I spent half an hour trying to fix this.

[debraspicher]

This happened to me, but I suspected a bug almost immediately. Mainly because I was bouncing back and forth working on this template from Designer<->Publisher sometime yesterday and working with text frames there. The background for my Art Text in Designer was coming up black sharing the same setting from Publisher. This was in the new document created from the template. I couldn't remember us being able to add background to text frames in Designer... much less remove it, which was the other clue.

And for clarity, the way I moved back and forth was through File > Edit in Publisher... and vice-versa. So maybe that's a potential trigger. Maybe not.

Thank you for @walt.farrell pointing out the revert option. This will come in handy later I am sure.

Edited March 4, 2023 by debraspicher
more info, reworded post

[nitro912gr]

man this is getting tiresome with older files lately...

this revert works but losing all the styles in the progress is adding extra work here and there

[Linsoda]

I had the same situation a few minutes ago when I opened an af file in Publisher, the frame fill color was set to 255,255,255 by default for Artistic Text and Frame Text.

To disable it, please find an option called "Frame Fill" in the publisher Persona and change the color to "None".

It's probably not a bug, but because I accidentally pressed one of the ColorPicker shortcuts.

[eobet]

2024 and I just got this in Affinity Photo 2.4.2 😑

(Select text and Edit - Defaults - Revert worked.)

[nitro912gr]

eh well can we get some fix for this please? it now happened in a new file when I reopened it.

that text frame tab mentioned above that show the button is not working anymore, I can't get the text frame tab to open, although I see the icon, when I press it, it does nothing.

 

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, nitro912gr said:

that text frame tab mentioned above that show the button is not working anymore, I can't get the text frame tab to open, although I see the icon, when I press it, it does nothing.

Are you still talking about Designer V1?

[nitro912gr]

ah no sorry, I'm in v2 now, I see the button but it does nothing, only revert works.

[walt.farrell]

51 minutes ago, nitro912gr said:

ah no sorry, I'm in v2 now, I see the button but it does nothing, only revert works.

You should not even see the button if you're in Designer, as mentioned above. 

What are you doing that causes the white background? Copy/paste from another application, or something else?

Have you done an Edit > Defaults > Save after the Revert?

[nitro912gr]

On 5/4/2022 at 9:10 PM, pbasdf said:

It turns out the Text Frame Studio panel is available in AD, but just really hard to open: it's not listed in View -> Studio and not available from the Context Toolbar for Frame Text or Artistic Text.  But it is available from the Context Toolbar if you have Text on a Curve.  So, create a curve, then select the Artistic Text tool, and click on the curve to create the Artistic Text.  Now the Context Toolbar should include an option to open the Text Frame panel:

The panel will open

and can be docked and used any text frames, artistic text, text on a curve, etc.

 

I did this and it showed. But the tab never opened when I pressed the button.

The thing is I can't revert all the time and need to reapply styles.

I need a solution like make the button work or to have this type of fill removed from AD.

[R C-R]

36 minutes ago, nitro912gr said:

I did this and it showed. But the tab never opened when I pressed the button.

Yes, because that button should not be there in Affinity Designer -- it is a minor bug that has never been fixed. That's because only Affinity Publisher has a Text Frame Panel, so if the text frame default background ever got set to a color it had to be done in Affinity Publisher & the only way to change it in Affinity Designer would be to use the revert & save method already discussed.