Publisher removed the applied master pages from document...

[Meanderling]

Hi All,

Just wondering if anyone's experienced this or knows what might have caused it...

I have a Publisher file with several master pages, which have been applied throughout the 100+ pages of the document. Everything was looking fine, I double checked the document and saved it as a new version because it was finished. However, today when I opened the new version, it's removed all of the master pages from the document and applied just 1 master page throughout. All masters seem to be intact, but are no longer applied to any of the pages. 

It definitely wasn't like that when I saved it. Luckily I have a version I'd saved a few minutes earlier, so no major damage (assuming I can remember what I'd done between versions), but so not helpful

I wondered if the problem occurred because I'd applied master pages to master pages, but doing that has been mentioned elsewhere in the forum and nobody seemed to flag it as 'disallowed'.  BTW Publisher has crashed or instantly closed a few times recently (for no apparent reason), but nothing like that on this occasion. None of the files look bloated, but the 'latest' version (without the master) is not surprisingly smaller than it's predecessor.

Does anyone have any ideas what's going on? I definitely don't want that happening again, so any advice would be appreciated.

Many thanks!!

[NathanC]

Hi @Meanderling,

It would be helpful if you could upload both versions of the save files (if they're both still available) to the below private dropbox link so we can take a look. As far as i'm aware applying a master page to another master page shouldn't cause the spreads to default/all change to the same master page and I haven't been able to replicate that behaviour so far, but it could depend on how this was done.

https://www.dropbox.com/request/TYGhlJkzbxAQjRkZWXb5

[Meanderling]

8 hours ago, NathanC said:

Hi @Meanderling,

It would be helpful if you could upload both versions of the save files (if they're both still available) to the below private dropbox link so we can take a look. As far as i'm aware applying a master page to another master page shouldn't cause the spreads to default/all change to the same master page and I haven't been able to replicate that behaviour so far, but it could depend on how this was done.

https://www.dropbox.com/request/TYGhlJkzbxAQjRkZWXb5

Hi @NathanC,

Thanks for replying!

I've uploaded the files as requested - I'm not sure if the 'date modified' info will remain intact, but if it doesn't FYI, version _03.1 was saved at 00:49 and _04_X was saved at 00:50, so virtually identical (I added _X to the file name itself (without resaving) when I realised it was kaput). After that, I tweaked version _03.1 and saved it as a new version 4, on reopening it today, everything seems to be intact and as it should be.

I wondered if I might have done something by mistake (it's possible!), but I don't think there's an easy to do what it did. For instance, if I'd somehow selected all the pages and replaced the existing master(s), that would account for most of what happened. However, pages 18-25 still have headings (but none of the other data that was on the page), but now they appear as text frames, rather pulled in from master, as per the original file. 

Let me know if you need any more info.

Thanks again!!

L

[NathanC]

10 hours ago, Meanderling said:

I've uploaded the files as requested - I'm not sure if the 'date modified' info will remain intact, but if it doesn't FYI, version _03.1 was saved at 00:49 and _04_X was saved at 00:50, so virtually identical (I added _X to the file name itself (without resaving) when I realised it was kaput). After that, I tweaked version _03.1 and saved it as a new version 4, on reopening it today, everything seems to be intact and as it should be.

I wondered if I might have done something by mistake (it's possible!), but I don't think there's an easy to do what it did. For instance, if I'd somehow selected all the pages and replaced the existing master(s), that would account for most of what happened. However, pages 18-25 still have headings (but none of the other data that was on the page), but now they appear as text frames, rather pulled in from master, as per the original file. 

Thanks for sending over the files, as you've mentioned the most feasible way this error happened was by applying a master with 'Replace Existing' ticked along with specified pages set, but without the files being saved with history there isn't a simple way to identify what happened, especially with 1-25 still having some of the frame content intact but completely removed from the original master pages is particularly strange.

Going forward, it would be beneficial if you could enable 'Save History with Document' with the file so if the issue is encountered again we can trace the steps to what resulted in this issue occurring (this will cause the file size to bloat).

[Meanderling]

4 hours ago, NathanC said:

Going forward, it would be beneficial if you could enable 'Save History with Document' with the file so if the issue is encountered again we can trace the steps to what resulted in this issue occurring (this will cause the file size to bloat).

Aww shame, I've been marvelling at how teeny-tiny the file sizes are

Does 'Save History' record everything that's going on, including anything in the background or is it just saving user actions? If it's the latter, then it probably won't help, as the result would have taken a few steps to do manually and I'm pretty sure I couldn't have done it by accident.

I tend to have a lot of things open on my PC, so keeping file sizes small is a good thing. However, as mentioned, AF has crashed/closed inexplicably a few times recently, so if you think 'Save History' will yield some tech info, I'm happy to do it.

Thanks for looking into it for me!

[NathanC]

12 minutes ago, Meanderling said:

Does 'Save History' record everything that's going on, including anything in the background or is it just saving user actions?

It will retain the information within the History panel instead of clearing this data when the file is saved and closed, so the latter. It could give some indication of what the last actions were up to this issue happening to see if it's reproducible by following the same set of actions.