Resizing Affinity Publisher v1 documents in v2 shows broken paper size names/dimensions

[Truthseeker10]

Why do I find the weird edge cases?! 😭

My MacBook Pro is running macOS Ventura 13.2 and has both v1.10.6 and v2.0.3 of Affinity Publisher installed on it. I have many Affinity Publisher 1 documents. When I open these v1 documents in v2 it gives me the expected warning about it being a legacy format etc. The bug I've discovered concerns resizing such documents.

First the correct behaviour from Affinity Publisher v1…

One of these documents (attached as "Scarecrow 2022 Poster 1.afpub") was set up as A4 dimensions (210x297mm). If I open this in Affinity Publisher v1 and go to Spread Setup I can see this paper size and dimensions as being selected. I can then use the pop-up menu to get a list of other sizes (A3, A5, etc), select one and its correct dimensions populate the size boxes. Screen shots of these are attached with filenames beginning "APub v1" and show the initial size, the 'popped up' list of sizes, and the (correct) result of selecting A3.

Now for Affinity Publisher v2…

I open there same document in v2 and use Document Setup to do the same process: resize the A4 document to A3. The dimensions initially show in the panel correctly as being A4 210x297.

The first oddity is when I pop-up the list of paper sizes — I'm shown the list of A3 down to Business Card sizes TWICE in the menu instead of just once(?!).

When I select the (first) A3 size in the list I expect to see dimensions 297x420mm but instead it is set to 841x1198mm. This is WRONG. Returning to pop-up menu to A4 also shows the wrong dimensions now. Working my way through some of them gets these dimensions entered into the size fields, all wrong:

• A3 841x1198mm (These dimensions are actually A0!)
• A4 594x841mm (These dimensions are actually A1!)
• A5 420x594mm (These dimensions are actually A2!)
• A6 297x420mm (These dimensions are actually A3!)

Screen shots of these are attached with filenames beginning "APub v2" and show the initial size, the 'popped up' list of sizes, and the result of selecting A3 and then back to A4 (the dimensions selected by the pop-up menu are WRONG).

If I select from the second set of A4 etc sizes in the pop-up list I get different dimensions again: all wrong for their stated papers.

• A3 215.9x279.4mm (Seems to be Letter (ANSI A) size)
• A4 215.9x355.6mm (Seems to be Legal size)
• A5 279.4x431.8mm (Seems to be Ledger (ANSI B) size)
• A6 431.8x558.8mm (Seems to be ANSI C size)

If I proceed with the resize it's the numeric values that are honoured rather than the name of the paper size I selected. (eg, Selecting the first A3 from the list actually resizes my document to A0.)

If I create a brand new document in Affinity Publisher 2 and try to use Document Setup to then resize it II:

• Still get a doubled-up list of paper sizes in the pop-up menu, but
• Selecting an A3/A4/A5/A6 paper size in either the first or second set of sizes sets the correct dimensions for that paper size in the boxes.

So the problem with total wrong paper sizes only seems to affect v1 documents being opened in v2; new v2 documents get the correct paper size dimensions, although having the paper sizes listed twice is confusing.

It's like the v1 documents include the list of paper names and dimensions, but v2 is interpreting these wrongly — possibly to do with the A0/A1/A2 paper sizes now removed from the pop-up list — showing the first dimensions (for A0 in the v1 document) against v2's "A3" label in the pop-up menu, etc?

Technical info:

• Both Affinity Publisher 1.10.6 and Affinity Publisher 2.0.3 installed on the same MacBook Pro running macOS Ventura 13.2
• The problem is reproducible when opening v1 documents in v2, and so far seems to affect each v1 document I've tried it on
• Sample document and screenshots illustrating expected behaviour in v1, and incorrect behaviour in v2 attached
• Hardware acceleration is set to ON and using Metal

I can probably work around it for now be entering dimensions myself, but that's annoying and error prone.

Cheers,

Mike B-)

Scarecrow 2022 Poster 1.afpub

[MikeTO]

3 hours ago, Truthseeker10 said:

The first oddity is when I pop-up the list of paper sizes — I'm shown the list of A3 down to Business Card sizes TWICE in the menu instead of just once(?!).

This is a known issue with v2. It's more of a design flaw than a bug. In the New Document dialog each size is listed twice, once for print and once for press ready. In Spread Properties and Document Setup, they're listed twice without any prefix. There's no point to listing them twice when editing properties for a document you've already created, with or without a prefix. So pick whichever A3 you want, they both do the same thing.

3 hours ago, Truthseeker10 said:

When I select the (first) A3 size in the list I expect to see dimensions 297x420mm but instead it is set to 841x1198mm. This is WRONG....... So the problem with total wrong paper sizes only seems to affect v1 documents being opened in v2; new v2 documents get the correct paper size dimensions, although having the paper sizes listed twice is confusing.

This is a known bug with opening v1 documents in v2.

Cheers

[Truthseeker10]

Thank you, MikeTO!

It's a relief in a way that it's a known bug opening V1 documents in v2 — I did search the forums but didn't spot anything that seemed similar to what I was seeing, although there posts about missing A2/A1/A0 sizes, which gave me the clue that the dimensions I was seeing might correlate to them.

One thing I'd disagree with is that whilst on a new document the two presets for A3/A4/A5 etc show the same dimensions they don't when opening a v1 document; you get different sizes for each of the A3 pair etc. However, I guess that's to do with the bug.

I'll keep my fingers crossed the Affinity fix the problem before I need to convert too many more v1 documents. 🤞

I'm guessing that once a v1 document has been opened and saved in the new v2 format (complete with wrong sizes for its paper presets) any future bug fix won't correct it, as it'll now be deemed to be a v2 format file? If so, I might have to re-create my newsletter files from scratch as v2 documents as I've already converted them. 😭

Cheers,
Mike B-)

[MikeTO]

In 2.0.3, if you choose A4 for a document created in v1 which shows 594x841mm instead of 210x297mm, click OK, and then re-open the window you'll see that the preset is now named <true> and has a size of 594x841mm which isn't what you wanted. Instead of choosing A4, choose Letter which is 3 items below A4 in the list. Then after clicking OK and re-opening the window you'll see that A4 is selected. The bug is due to the sizes being associated with the wrong items in the list for documents created in v1.

So it's just a bit confusing but you should be able to pick the size you need, or you can enter the measurements manually.

Any future bug fix shouldn't have any impact on your documents because the documents store the size and not the preset.

Cheers

[NathanC]

Hi @Truthseeker10,

The issue with V1 documents showing incorrect page dimensions has now been fixed, so you should no longer encounter this as of 2.0.4. 🙂