afpub file recovery

[Oreodog]

Question 1

I’ve been working on my second book in Publisher. It is/was a 2.1 GB file that initially would not reopen. (System is 8.00GB) A message to the affect that the file could not be completely found. When it did open it was called “untitled afpub” (63.4%). I have tried using Run per your FAQ without luck.

1. Can the file be found or reconstructed?

2. If lost, can I pick up where the file broke off? It is currently at 49 pages. There had been approximately 100. The pages appear to be fine.

Question 2

Just before I had the above problem I decided and purchased Affinity-Publisher 2.0. I have downloaded it but not been able to open it because I still have Windows 8.1. 
1. Should I wait to upgrade to Win10 or Win11?

2. Should I try to complete the book with the Win 8.1?

Cheers

 

[Oreodog]

The message that appears when attempting to open the file is: “The file appears to be truncated (shorter than expected)

[MikeTO]

Hi Oreo and welcome to the forum.

Whether or not you should upgrade is up to you and whether your computer can support Windows 10 or 11. Windows 8.1 is getting rather old so if you want to run modern software you should consider upgrading, but I realize that could require upgrading your computer, too. But you won't be able to use Affinity 2.0 until you have Windows 10 or 11.

As for your document, you'll have to wait for Serif to answer but from what you describe it doesn't sound promising. There are two reasons a Publisher file might be that large. First, you chose to embed all the images rather than link them externally. This isn't advisable as it leads to large files like this. Second, in v1 for macOS on an M1, there's an issue with linked images sometimes being embedded anyway. It shouldn't happen to you on Windows but with v2 there have ben a few reports of it so it's possible you ran into this issue. If you ever see a file becoming this large again and are able to re-open it, try using the Resource Manager and switching all the images temporarily to embedded, wait until it finishes, then immediately switch them all back to linked and re-save the document. For those who have been affected by this issue, this workaround has generally been found to resolve it, at least until you encounter the issue again.

If you're able to re-open part of the document, my advice is to immediately try this embed/link switch and then save it under a new filename. It would be great if you're able to salvage any part of it.

Good luck!

[Oreodog]

I would like to report back that all is well now. I was unable to download and install Win11 with Microsoft help and a computer consultant. I finally came across an article stating that one needed to use Win10 to download and install Win8.1 and it could be done for free. Turns out that did the trick and allowed me to to open Affinity-Publisher2.0 with the misx. app. Half fo the original Doc was recovered.       
Many thanks, Oreodog