Can anyone help me migrate from Indesign to Publisher?

[AuthorSP]

Hello, I am a novice at Indesign, having used a template to format my book layouts. I want to move to Affinity Publisher, but I don't know enough about either to move over my settings from Indesign to Publisher. I created a template out of one file, but when I use it and place a Word doc, it doesn't seem to take effect. Is there anyone who offer me some advice to help me get started and move over my settings? Thanks for any help!

[Dan C]

Welcome to the Affinity Forums @AuthorSP!

Please note I have edited your post here, as we don't allow requests for training services etc here on the forums - though I am certainly hopefully other Affinity users will be able to offer you some advice here 

[Zac Beldan]

Publisher can open InDesign IDML files. Try exporting an IDML file from your InDesign file and then opening that in Publisher. 

[AuthorSP]

1 minute ago, Zac Beldan said:

Publisher can open InDesign IDML files. Try exporting an IDML file from your InDesign file and then opening that in Publisher. 

Thanks, that is what I started with. I opened the file in Adobe and saved it as an IDML. Then I opened that in Publisher and saved it as a template. Then I opened the template and the existing document (a chapter from my book) looked perfect. So I saved the template as a regular Publisher file, then deleted the existing text and placed the Word doc for my new chapter. It did not look at all the same. I also had to add a lot of pages, but I couldn't seem to get it to flow the text to the next pages. Indesign has a click option to reflow. Can't find that in Publisher, but more importantly, I think the extra pages would not be needed if the proper text sizing, leading, spacing, etc, had been applied from the template.

[Stepaan]

The best way is to assign Paragraph/text styles to the text. Also, there is an Autoflow feature in Publisher – Paste the text to a single text frame, click the red triangle at the right bottom side of the text frame while holding shift. Publisher will add as many pages as needed, all linked.

[tudor]

@AuthorSP I suggest you start by perusing the information available on the Affinity help website

[Old Bruce]

56 minutes ago, AuthorSP said:

I opened the file in Adobe and saved it as an IDML.

Then I opened that in Publisher and saved it as a template.

First thing you should do after opening an IDML file is rebuild the text styles. The Paragraph and Character Styles will have settings from InDesign which have no analogue in Affinity Publisher. They may be fine, they may be the source of problems.

[AuthorSP]

22 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

First thing you should do after opening an IDML file is rebuild the text styles. The Paragraph and Character Styles will have settings from InDesign which have no analogue in Affinity Publisher. They may be fine, they may be the source of problems.

Thanks. How do you do that? I looked around the settings and did not see an option to do that. Part of my difficulty is that I was working from my publisher's version of a document to create books in Indesign. I know just a little about Indesign, but not enough to know what to look for in either program.

 

 

[Old Bruce]

Text Styles are a in the Window > Text > Text Styles.

1 hour ago, AuthorSP said:

I know just a little about Indesign, but not enough to know what to look for in either program.

I would suggest checking out a few of the video tutorials from Affinity

How to use Text Styles 

 

and from that youtube page you can see other basic tutorials. They are quite short but informative. Note that some of the menus have changed from Version one in these videos to the current Version 2.