Hyperlink panel does not appear, everything grayed out cannot access Publisher

[ludoZici]

Hi All - 

I've had this issue for some time, on both the stable release and the beta version on Mac, Catalina, dual monitor system.  My documents are hyperlink-heavy, I'm quite often accessing the hyperlink panel.  It bounces between both monitors when it chooses, and more often than not, as in the case today, the panel did not appear, is not found on either screen, yet Publisher acknowledges the panel as open and will not allow me to do anything else.  I've attached a screenshot of the popup menu off the dock icon, you'll note the two open windows for Publisher, both grayed out.

Normally I would force quit and restart, but at this juncture I've a great deal of material I'm going to lose if I do that.  Silly me for not saving as I went today!  Am I the only one who's struggling with this?  Am I doing something incorrectly?

Thanks in advance!

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

You could try using View > Studio to turn off the Hyperlinks panel, and then turn it on again. Or you could use View > Studio > Reset Studio and then see if it will work.

[ludoZici]

Hi Walt - 

Thanks for the response.  Unfortunately, in this scenario nothing works on the tool bar, the system merely "bonks" at me if I click on anything that isn't grayed out.

[walt.farrell]

33 minutes ago, ludoZici said:

Unfortunately, in this scenario nothing works on the tool bar, the system merely "bonks" at me if I click on anything that isn't grayed out.

That should not be related to the Hyperlinks panel, as it is part of the studio and those are not modal, and do not block use of anything else in the application.

However, the Hyperlink Properties dialog is a modal popup, so perhaps that's what you meant. For me, pressing Esc (Escape) will dismiss that dialog. That would allow you to Save your document, and take other corrective action if the issue happens when you try to insert another Hyperlink.

However, if it keeps happening, the only corrective action I can think of is to reset the application, and I'm not sure how complete a reset would be needed. And while there are workarounds to using the standard reset procedure (hold Ctrl while starting the app, check the areas to reset, click Clear) I'm not a Mac user so I really don't want to try to describe them. Using the Ctrl method for a full reset you would need to make a backup of your "user" directory so you can restore brushes, assets, styles, presets, etc. after you do the reset.

You could try a minimal reset. Press Ctrl, start the application, leave only the first 3 boxes checked in the Clear User Data dialog, and press Clear. That might be enough, but I can't say for sure.

[ludoZici]

It's the box that appears when right-clicking on selected text and choosing from the menu Interactive > Hyperlink.  Escape does nothing, nor does anything else.  I'm compelled to force-quit, which I did today four times!

I'll give your suggestions a go, I'm toast for today, but there's definitely tomorrow.  Oh those pesky deadlines!

Thanks again Walt!