Saving to varied files

[CarolineL]

Sorry about another couple of questions. I really am trying to find the answers myself first but can’t always. (IPad V2)
 

The first is about saving. I’ve worked out that by swiping left on the homescreen I can save my work into a file, but it doesn’t seem to give me the option at that point where to save it.  Is the only way to keep changing it in settings? 

I also changed the background colour of the workspace around artboards, but now it’s stuck on that colour.  I’ve tried closing and re opening and that doesn’t help. 
 

And lastly, every time I open a doc that control button shows in the workspace.  I don’t think I’ll ever use it - can I stop it from coming up as default? 

[DM1]

On 11/11/2022 at 1:46 AM, CarolineL said:

The first is about saving. I’ve worked out that by swiping left on the homescreen I can save my work into a file, but it doesn’t seem to give me the option at that point where to save it.  Is the only way to keep changing it in settings? 

Hi and welcome to the forums. Questions are welcomed here.
Saving is something Affinity need to improve. The current method is a hangover from earlier iOS restrictions.

Affinity apps create a 'sandboxed' version of files to work on. These sandboxed files cannot be accessed by other apps. They have been prone to corrupting in the past leaving users no recourse but to start again. Unless…… they did the smart thing and actually Saved their files.

Saving (unlike auto save which only updates the sandboxed version), creates an xxx.afxxx file outside of the app. These files can be copied, moved, shared easily so you always have a fall back if you lose work. 

There are several ways to save a file.

Firstly, from the Home Screen, swipe left on the file icon and name your file. Then swipe left and choose Save. This creates a name.afxxx file in the default folder (set in preferences). You don’t get to navigate to a location. If you don’t name it the files they will be unnamed.afxxx, unamed01.afxxx etc. You can if you wish, use Files app to move thes files from the Default folder to another folder. Then use Open to navigate to the new folder and open the file there. Using Save will now update to the new folder.

Secondly, open an unsaved file and use Document menu to Save a Copy. At this point (unsaved file) you will notice that there is no Save option in the Document menu. Save a Copy allows you to name and navigate to any folder. After saving you still have your original unsaved file open ( you only saved a copy of it🙂). Return to Home Screen, select Open and navigate to the folder where you saved your named copy. Select that and open it. This creates a new project icon on the Homescreen and in sandbox. Now you are working on an externally saved file, located in a folder of your choosing and….. under the Document menu there is now a Save option sitting above Save a Copy 👏. Tapping Save either here or on the new Home Screen icon will save the edits back to the folder file. You can now delete the old unsaved/unnamed Home Screen file icon. 

Its not as easy as it should be but once you get used to it it’s ok. Remember, best practice is to Save first and Save often.

 

 

[DM1]

On 11/11/2022 at 1:46 AM, CarolineL said:

also changed the background colour of the workspace around artboards, but now it’s stuck on that colour.  I’ve tried closing and re opening and that doesn’t help. 

Could you post a screenshot as I’m not sure what you mean .AFAIK it’s not possible to change the workspace Color (only shade from black to white).

[DM1]

On 11/11/2022 at 1:46 AM, CarolineL said:

And lastly, every time I open a doc that control button shows in the workspace.  I don’t think I’ll ever use it - can I stop it from coming up as default? 

I haven’t found a way to do this yet. Maybe mods can help clarify🙂

[CarolineL]

4 hours ago, DM1 said:

Hi and welcome to the forums. Questions are welcomed here.
Saving is something Affinity need to improve. The current method is a hangover from earlier iOS restrictions.

Affinity apps create a 'sandboxed' version of files to work on. These sandboxed files cannot be accessed by other apps. They have been prone to corrupting in the past leaving users no recourse but to start again. Unless…… they did the smart thing and actually Saved their files.

Saving (unlike auto save which only updates the sandboxed version), creates an xxx.afxxx file outside of the app. These files can be copied, moved, shared easily so you always have a fall back if you lose work. 

There are several ways to save a file.

Firstly, from the Home Screen, swipe left on the file icon and name your file. Then swipe left and choose Save. This creates a name.afxxx file in the default folder (set in preferences). You don’t get to navigate to a location. If you don’t name it the files they will be unnamed.afxxx, unamed01.afxxx etc. You can if you wish, use Files app to move thes files from the Default folder to another folder. Then use Open to navigate to the new folder and open the file there. Using Save will now update to the new folder.

Secondly, open an unsaved file and use Document menu to Save a Copy. At this point (unsaved file) you will notice that there is no Save option in the Document menu. Save a Copy allows you to name and navigate to any folder. After saving you still have your original unsaved file open ( you only saved a copy of it🙂). Return to Home Screen, select Open and navigate to the folder where you saved your named copy. Select that and open it. This creates a new project icon on the Homescreen and in sandbox. Now you are working on an externally saved file, located in a folder of your choosing and….. under the Document menu there is now a Save option sitting above Save a Copy 👏. Tapping Save either here or on the new Home Screen icon will save the edits back to the folder file. You can now delete the old unsaved/unnamed Home Screen file icon. 

Its not as easy as it should be but once you get used to it it’s ok. Remember, best practice is to Save first and Save often.

 

 

Thank you so much for the detail. I’ll give the save a copy a go.  It sounds like it could be what I need (once they’re closed I won’t need to open them often). Excellent, thanks.  

[CarolineL]

3 hours ago, DM1 said:

Could you post a screenshot as I’m not sure what you mean .AFAIK it’s not possible to change the workspace Color (only shade from black to white).

Sorry, I should have said ‘shade’ rather than colour. It got stuck on my first change. I wanted to play around and see what I preferred, but I clicked a darker grey and now it won’t change. It must be a glitch I guess. 

[DM1]

6 minutes ago, CarolineL said:

Sorry, I should have said ‘shade’ rather than colour. It got stuck on my first change. I wanted to play around and see what I preferred, but I clicked a darker grey and now it won’t change. It must be a glitch I guess. 

You can set shade In Preferences/User Interface. The top two sliders, one for workspace one for Artboard 🙂 slide left for dark, right for lighter.

[Swörl]

The "swipe left on Home Screen" is worse than it was before: it's not discoverable and you still can't pick a destination for your file prior to saving it. To make matter worse, v2 creates a new folder in iCloud with the exact same name as v1, but it will be empty. 

→ Right now the only solution is to create blank.afdesign anywhere in your cloud storage, and to duplicate it before opening it on iPad to choose where a file end up... Or do the old save > move in Files all > close in Affinity > reopen new destination in Affinity...

[DM1]

35 minutes ago, Swörl said:

The "swipe left on Home Screen" is worse than it was before: it's not discoverable and you still can't pick a destination for your file prior to saving it. To make matter worse, v2 creates a new folder in iCloud with the exact same name as v1, but it will be empty. 

→ Right now the only solution is to create blank.afdesign anywhere in your cloud storage, and to duplicate it before opening it on iPad to choose where a file end up... Or do the old save > move in Files all > close in Affinity > reopen new destination in Affinity...

Or…. Use Save a Copy, name and navigate to folder. Then use Open to navigate to that file and now you have a Save option that updates that file.🙂

[Dan C]

On 11/12/2022 at 3:24 AM, DM1 said:

On 11/10/2022 at 2:46 PM, CarolineL said:

And lastly, every time I open a doc that control button shows in the workspace.  I don’t think I’ll ever use it - can I stop it from coming up as default? 

I haven’t found a way to do this yet. Maybe mods can help clarify🙂

Currently this option will always show when opening/creating a document, though I can certainly see the use-case where you would not want this to appear, so I'll get this logged as an improvement request with our devs now