Affinity publisher export freeze

[grapher]

Constantly having problems with freezing when exporting book to PDF. When i select Area: all chapters - application stopped to respond. I try it again, same. IMO its the generating the preview that fails. 

Its problem that its there since version 2 arrived.

 

[MikeTO]

Hi Grapher, I have the same problem with exporting even simple test books to PDF. Once you have a problem with the Books feature the best option is to quit and open it again. Sometimes Publisher won't let you close the Book and you have to force quit Publisher.

I believe Serif is aware of this issue so hopefully it's on the list for a future update.

Cheers

[Dan C]

Hi @grapher,

Thanks for your report and our sincerest apologies for the delayed response here. We are exceptionally busy following the release of V2 and we thank you for your continued patience and understanding here.

As mentioned above by Mike, our team are aware of a few issues with Books in version 2.0.4, many of which have been fixed in our latest customer beta version 2.1.

I'd recommend trying the beta by following the instructions in the below post, with a copy of your Publisher file to see if this has been resolved for you.

I hope this helps

[Romanos]

Hello--

I have a booklet that I've designed that is only 20 "statement" (us letter half-sized) pages.  Embedded graphics (PDF files of music pages).  I cannot export this (as pages, not spreads) to save my life.  The program either freezes, or just looks like nothing is happening, but then you cannot print, or close, or anything else, even though you can still scroll around and peruse the menu options.  

I need to print these booklets for a school and need them, well, ASAP.  Advice welcome.  I've tried restarting the program and computer multiple times.  I cannot figure out what the issue is.  File attached.

 

School Masses, Ordinary Time Fall 2023 (A) Fridays of October & November.afpub

[Komatös]

Hi @Romanos

Select All Pages in the Export dialog!

Lost in translation! Try with deactivated hardware acceleration in the program settings -> Performance.

[Hangman]

Hi @Romanos and welcome to the forums,

I've just tried exporting your Publisher file using All Pages with Hardware Acceleration both Enabled and Disabled and while your file successfully exported in both cases Publisher froze after exporting your file exhibiting the same symptoms you describe.

This appears to be a widely reported issue on both Mac and Windows...

Could you let us know whether are running Mac or Windows, which version of the OS you are using and your system specs.

[elk]

It would be very handsome to have an option to shut the preview off. It’s time consuming and often somewhat annoying. In many cases I don’t need a preview. And its also much too big IMO.

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, elk said:

It would be very handsome to have an option to shut the preview off. It’s time consuming and often somewhat annoying. In many cases I don’t need a preview. And its also much too big IMO.

Just hit the Export button. We don't actually need to wait.

[elk]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

Just hit the Export button. We don't actually need to wait.

Haha! Never guessed that!

[Dan C]

Hi @Romanos,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums & thanks for your report!

From the file provided, this appears to be failing to export to PDF due to the "School Masses, Ordinary Time Fall 2023 (A) Fridays of August & September • Voice 5.5.pdf" document, placed in your file.

As can be seen in the Resource Manager, this is the only embedded PDF file which cannot be 'Collected' or 'Make Linked', indicating the PDF data itself is missing from your Publisher document - 

I'm not entirely certainly of the cause of the issue with this PDF in your file - however after deleting the 3 instances of this placed document from your file, I was able to complete the PDF export as expected.

I'd recommend deleting this placed PDF from your document and replacing this with the original PDF file, then try exporting once again.

I'm logging this document with our development team now as I've not seen this occur previously. If possible, are you able to attach a copy of this specific PDF file here for me?

I hope this helps

[Hangman]

Hi @Dan C,

I'm slightly baffled as to why the file you've referenced above is shown as an embedded Affinity Publisher file rather than an embedded PDF in Resource Manager.

The file is certainly labelled as a PDF but my expectation, if this were a PDF embedded in an Affinity Publisher file then the Publisher file were placed into another Publisher file would be to see the Placed PDF when using Edit Document but you don't, you see what appears to be a native Publisher file (even though it may not be).

Is there any particular reason why Resource Manager isn't showing this file as an Embedded PDF?

[Dan C]

I believe the PDF data from the embedded file is essentially 'missing' from the Affinity document, and the app is trying to determine the file type for the data remaining - albeit incorrectly.

There are a few oddities with this embedded file, including the 'Type' shown in the resource manager, assumedly due to the unexpected status of this embedded data, which is also causing the reported issues when exporting.

As above, I've logged this file with our development team for further investigation, as without the required development tools it would be very difficult for me to be certain of the exact reason for this file being in the 'embedded' but 'missing' state that it appears to be in.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Hangman said:

I'm slightly baffled as to why the file you've referenced above is shown as an embedded Affinity Publisher file rather than an embedded PDF in Resource Manager.

Is it possible that the extension of the filename was changed from afpub to pdf at some point? Experimentally, I made a copy of a small afpub document, changed its extension to pdf, & embedded it in a new afpub document. Resource Manager shows this for it:

Not surprisingly this file won't open in Preview.app, complaining that it might be damaged, but it opens fine in any of the Affinity apps.

[Hangman]

43 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Is it possible that the extension of the filename was changed from afpub to pdf at some point? Experimentally, I made a copy of a small afpub document, changed its extension to pdf, & embedded it in a new afpub document. Resource Manager shows this for it:

I agree that does indeed display with a 'pdf' filename and an Affinity Publisher 'Type' in Resource Manager, where it differs though is once said file is placed in a new Publisher Document.

When the file with the changed file extension is placed in a new Publisher document as an embedded file:

1. Clicking 'Edit Document' the first time reveals the embedded pdf
2. Clicking 'Edit Document' a second time in the Embedded document then reveals the content that makes up that file with the changed file extension

In the source file referenced by @Dan C that doesn't happen, selecting the pdf and clicking 'Edit Document' takes you directly to Step 2, I'm assuming for the reasons sighted.

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Not surprisingly this file won't open in Preview.app, complaining that it might be damaged, but it opens fine in any of the Affinity apps.

Strangely, I see the opposite, Preview quite happily opens the file, whereas other PDF readers, including Acrobat, object...

[R C-R]

55 minutes ago, Hangman said:

When the file with the changed file extension is placed in a new Publisher document as an embedded file:

1. Clicking 'Edit Document' the first time reveals the embedded pdf
2. Clicking 'Edit Document' a second time in the Embedded document then reveals the content that makes up that file with the changed file extension

In the source file referenced by @Dan C that doesn't happen, selecting the pdf and clicking 'Edit Document' takes you directly to Step 2, I'm assuming for the reasons sighted.

Hmm. I do not see this behavior when I embed my Section example.pdf test file in an APub document. For both this file & the one embedded in the "School Masses, Ordinary Time Fall 2023 (A) Fridays of October & November" apub file, clicking once on Edit Document reveals the content in a new tab labeled "<embedded>."

 

1 hour ago, Hangman said:

Strangely, I see the opposite, Preview quite happily opens the file, whereas other PDF readers, including Acrobat, object...

What happens if you use my example file? Can you attach your D50 file with the changed extension to a reply so I can try it on my Mac?

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "[User File] Exporting to PDF does not complete, locks up app. Embedded PDF in file appears to be missing all data." (REF: AF-624) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.4.0.2175".
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.

[Gianni Becattini]

I also have a recurrent problem in exporting books, but in my case it does not freeze but crashes (with the dump window).

My problem is that now it crashes ALWAYS with TWO different (rather big) documents.

The problem arises only on M2 MacBook Pro, while, until now, it survives on the iMac i9. They have different memory sizes: 16 on the M2 and 64 on the i9. Could this explain the different behavior?

I am very concerned, because if also the i9 starts crashing I am stuck with the work.

Any idea? Thanks 

[Dan C]

Please create a New Thread for your separate report, including a copy of the document(s) causing these crashes, where possible.

Many thanks in advance

[Gianni Becattini]

I do...

[Gianni Becattini]

I wish to add something here; I also had the problem with freezing, which was not due to APub but to iCloud.

I understood that the problem is that iCloud removes the local file contents after a time you don't use it. So, APub is not stuck, but it just is waiting that iCloud completes the downloads.

Clearly, this does not mean that every case is so, but I continue being tricked by this behaviour (still this morning...)