Hi! Affinity publisher keeps crashing when using the find feature over and over

[dmclaude]

Hi, m1 touchbar macbook pro, affinity publisher v2 - trying to run a find command on an afdesign file makes publisher crash. It happens every single time, and the find and replace functionality is key for our workflow. error report attached.

 

 

publisher_errorreport.rtf

[MikeTO]

Hi Claude and welcome to the forum. Are you still experiencing this issue with v2.0.3 and does it happen with every document you try or just a specific file?

Is there anything special about the find and replace operation you're doing or is this just searching for any text string?

Are you able to share a sample file?

I use F&R constantly but I've never experienced a crash with it in v2. However, there is an annoying issue where it picks up a white space character along with the selected text when you copy something to search for.

Cheers

[Inti]

I am having the same issue, and unfortunately it happens with all files, even PDF's I try to open. 

 

It works fine on my windows computer but does not work on macos and it is essential to have it. 

[MikeTO]

Hi @Inti and welcome to the forum.

For both of you, I think Serif will want a few more details - a screen recording of the crash occurring would be ideal.

To confirm, you choose Find & Replace and the panel appears or is given focus (the cursor is placed in the text field). You type some text into the Find field (or are you pasting?) You click Find or press Return (which one?). And then it crashes or is it at some other point?

Does it happen every time? If you create a blank document and do it does it crash?

Cheers

[MikeTO]

Could everybody with this problem please answer these questions to help narrow this down?

1. When does it crash? When you open the Find & Replace panel? When you type into the Find field? When you paste into the Find field? When you click the Find button? When you press Return as a shortcut for Find? At some other point?
2. Is the Find & Replace panel open before you use it or does that not matter?
3. If so, is the Find & Replace panel visible (not a hidden tab) before you use it or does that not matter?
4. Is the Find & Replace panel docked or undocked?

Thank you

[MikeTO]

I experienced the Find crash myself for the first time this evening. I had the panel open. I pressed Cmd+F, typed a word, pressed Return, and it crashed.

Prior to doing this I had searched for a different word, gone to a result, and made some edits.

I wasn't able to reproduce it on demand.

[Futurosity]

On 1/23/2023 at 1:04 PM, MikeTO said:

Could everybody with this problem please answer these questions to help narrow this down?

1. When does it crash? When you open the Find & Replace panel? When you type into the Find field? When you paste into the Find field? When you click the Find button? When you press Return as a shortcut for Find? At some other point?
2. Is the Find & Replace panel open before you use it or does that not matter?
3. If so, is the Find & Replace panel visible (not a hidden tab) before you use it or does that not matter?
4. Is the Find & Replace panel docked or undocked?

Thank you

 I don't have the Find panel open. If I hit Command+F or select Find from the menu, it crashes instantly. Has happened every time. Crash report attached.

Crash Report.rtf

Edited January 24, 2023 by Futurosity

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, Futurosity said:

 I don't have the Find panel open. If I hit Command+F or select Find from the menu, it crashes instantly. Has happened every time. Crash report attached.

That's interesting. Could you try a couple of things?

1. Publisher copies the selected word to the Find text field when you choose the Find command. Are you selecting a word or phrase? If so, please try it without selecting a word or phrase to see if that's the issue.
2. Start Publisher, choose Window > Find to open the Find panel. Create a new document, draw a frame, type some test, and then click in the Find text field. Type the text to find and click the button. Does that work? If that works, type some more text in the document and then press Cmd+F - does that work?

Thanks

[Futurosity]

2 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Start Publisher, choose Window > Find to open the Find panel. Create a new document, draw a frame, type some test, and then click in the Find text field. Type the text to find and click the button.

Tried that. Crashed as soon as I clicked in the Find text field.

[Seneca]

 

3 minutes ago, Futurosity said:

Tried that. Crashed as soon as I clicked in the Find text field.

Have you updated Publisher to 2.0.3 yet? It's worth a try if you didn't.

[Futurosity]

1 minute ago, Seneca said:

Have you updated Publisher to 2.0.3 yet?

Yes, I have the current version. And I can't wait for the next one. I love Publisher, but this version seems to have a lot of bugs. I have multiple crashes every day.

[MikeTO]

11 hours ago, Futurosity said:

Tried that. Crashed as soon as I clicked in the Find text field.

Again this is interesting. Now the panel is already open and you're just clicking manually in the Find field so it's not being pre-populated by copying a selected word.

Is the Find panel docked or undocked? Could you try it the other way from what you have it?

Thanks

[dmclaude]

Hey all, I was working with Serif on this issue, when they mentioned something about dictionaries that made me think of grammarly. For those not aware, grammarly is a service that helps with spelling/grammar on all sites, and they have a desktop app that sort of displays an overlay over every input text field. I uninstalled grammarly's desktop app and it seems to have solved the problem. So check if you have any apps that are functioning as a sort of overlay or dictionary that may be trying to access the find/replace text field. 

Unsure what the conflict is, Serif's customer support has said they will connect with Grammarly as well. I suspect some sort of fatal conflict with the two programs trying to access the same field (although no other program seems to have this issue other than Publisher at this time). HTH

[Futurosity]

1 hour ago, dmclaude said:

I uninstalled grammarly's desktop app and it seems to have solved the problem.

That's it! Worked for me. I turned off Accessibility. There doesn't seem to be a way to disable Grammarly just for Publisher since the Grammarly widget doesn't appear in Publisher.

[They Them]

On 1/23/2023 at 9:04 PM, MikeTO said:

Could everybody with this problem please answer these questions to help narrow this down?

1. When does it crash? When you open the Find & Replace panel? When you type into the Find field? When you paste into the Find field? When you click the Find button? When you press Return as a shortcut for Find? At some other point?
2. Is the Find & Replace panel open before you use it or does that not matter?
3. If so, is the Find & Replace panel visible (not a hidden tab) before you use it or does that not matter?
4. Is the Find & Replace panel docked or undocked?

Thank you

1. As soon as I click on the box in 'Find' to enter the word to be replaced.
2. I opened the F&R via 'Window' in the tool bar.
3.                 "

4. Undocked.

I have copied the crash report, where do I send it?

[They Them]

On 1/24/2023 at 3:10 AM, MikeTO said:

I experienced the Find crash myself for the first time this evening. I had the panel open. I pressed Cmd+F, typed a word, pressed Return, and it crashed.

Prior to doing this I had searched for a different word, gone to a result, and made some edits.

I wasn't able to reproduce it on demand.

I have just created another plain text file, only this time I used CMD F instead of going through Window - Find and Replace. As soon as I pressed the F key, Publisher 2 crashed. So whether I go through Window or use the keyboard shortcut Publisher 2 rashes immediately. However, if I highlight the word first and then press CMD F, it doesn't crash.

Macbook Pro - 
2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5
Intel Iris Plus Graphics 1536 MB
16 GB 3733 MHZ LPDDR4X Running Ventura 13.1

I attach the crash report.

Thanks

F'n'R Crash Report..pdf

[MikeTO]

Hi @They Them, do you have Grammarly installed? This crash bug has been identified now as due to a conflict with Grammarly. While Serif or Grammarly will hopefully address it in the future, for now the workaround is to disable or uninstall Grammarly.

Cheers

[They Them]

On 2/14/2023 at 9:18 PM, MikeTO said:

Hi @They Them, do you have Grammarly installed? This crash bug has been identified now as due to a conflict with Grammarly. While Serif or Grammarly will hopefully address it in the future, for now the workaround is to disable or uninstall Grammarly.

Cheers

I do have Grammerly installed. I disabled it while using P2 and it worked! Thanks @MikeTO, you're a steely eyed missile man!

G

[Dan C]

Hi, 

This is a known issue, so hopefully we'll figure out why having Grammarly installed causes this and fix soon.

Lee

[Patrick Connor]

@dmclaude , @They Them @Futurosity and other participants

We could replicate this in February, but can no longer replicate this problem. Perhaps a Grammarly update has addressed this. Could you please retry it for us?

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "Grammarly for Desktop causes Publisher to crash when accessing the Find and Replace Panel" (REF: AFB-7131) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.1.0.1728".
This fix should soon be available as a customer beta and is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Serif Info Bot to notify us.

[MikeTO]

@Serif Info Bot It appears that this problem with Grammarly is still in build 1742 but it has migrated from Find & Replace to the Notes panel's separator field. Please see this thread.