Importing Pages document to Affinity Publisher

[drharrietd]

I have created a whole book in Pages and I'd like to import it into Affinity Publisher. I know Publisher can't import Pages, so I tried exporting it to Word on Pages and this didn't work. Then I tried exporting it to RTF and that didn't work. When I say didn't work, I mean that when I go to File - Import Content, it brings up everything that's on my desktop (I'm using Mac OS Ventura) but everything is greyed out, including the exported "Word" file and the exported "RTF" file. 

[drharrietd]

I should add that I don't want to import it as a PDF as I want to be able to edit it on Affinity

[drharrietd]

Ah right! Thanks so much. I'm very new to all this so glad to be able to ask questions here.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, drharrietd said:

File - Import Content

Create a document, and an initial text frame. Then use File > Place.

File > Import Content is used for brushes, assets, styles, etc. not for documents.

[drharrietd]

Thanks Walt

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome.

[Aleayo]

Mr. Farell,

Your answer is a year old, may be Publisher has evolved...

So for future audience that end up looking at this conversation :

The original poster stated that Publisher cannot import Pages documents

is it (still) true ?

(or may be File -> Place could already do it in 2023?)

[Pšenda]

5 hours ago, Aleayo said:

is it (still) true ?

The list of formats that individual applications can open (and export) are listed in the technical specifications:

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/publisher/full-feature-list/

[R C-R]

AFAIK, only Apple's Pages app can open *.pages files, nor will File > Place allow placing them into Affinity (all *.pages files are greyed out in that window).

[walt.farrell]

19 hours ago, Aleayo said:

The original poster stated that Publisher cannot import Pages documents

is it (still) true ?

Yes, still true. But you should be able to export from Pages as a .docx or .rtf file and Place that file into a Text Frame in Publisher.

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Yes, still true. But you should be able to export from Pages as a .docx or .rtf file and Place that file into a Text Frame in Publisher.

Have you tried this? When I try it with a Pages page layout (as opposed to word processing layout) document, I get a message that I can't export page layout documents to RTF. I can export to *.docx but placing a multi-page page layout document into APub creates a mess.

Note that I am using an older version of Pages so it may work better with newer ones.

[Aleayo]

3 hours ago, R C-R said:

Have you tried this? When I try it with a Pages page layout (as opposed to word processing layout) document, I get a message that I can't export page layout documents to RTF. I can export to *.docx but placing a multi-page page layout document into APub creates a mess.

Note that I am using an older version of Pages so it may work better with newer ones.

Thanks R C-R .... but you also give me the chill about when I will import... Resolution : it's the last time I use Pages!

[Aleayo]

Thanks R C-R, Walt.Farell, and Pšenda

I might return here to explain how my export/import went... if it can help others.

[Pšenda]

9 minutes ago, Aleayo said:

how my export/import went

Try PDF. 

 

[Aleayo]

10 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Try PDF. 

 

Wow. I got right away to read your link (full feature list), saw that they mention importing PDF but I though they meant as a picture...
I'll definitively try that. Really big thanks!!

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Pšenda said:

Try PDF. 

When I do that with a multi-page *.Pages document exported to PDF, I can only place one page of it at a time into my Afpub document. I think there might be a way to do it in one step but I haven't discovered it yet....

Anybody know of a one-step method to do this?

[walt.farrell]

35 minutes ago, R C-R said:

When I do that with a multi-page *.Pages document exported to PDF, I can only place one page of it at a time into my Afpub document. I think there might be a way to do it in one step but I haven't discovered it yet....

Anybody know of a one-step method to do this?

You might try Open instead of Place for a PDF. 

But if using Place, Autoflow should handle it: https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/pages/Media/placeImagesAutoflow.html

Tutorial: https://youtu.be/7sUyYDHIG1w (I think that one shows it; I haven't looked at it recently.)

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

But if using Place, Autoflow should handle it:

I thought that was for flowing multiple documents onto APub pages, not flowing one multi-page PDF document onto multiple Apub pages.

[walt.farrell]

Just now, R C-R said:

I thought that was for flowing multiple documents onto APub pages, not flowing one multi-page PDF document onto multiple Apub pages.

It can do either function.

[R C-R]

5 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

It can do either function.

File > Open works fine but I can't get Place to autoflow to work, with or without using text frames -- no red triangle appears.

[lacerto]

7 hours ago, R C-R said:

File > Open works fine but I can't get Place to autoflow to work, with or without using text frames -- no red triangle appears.

You can do this by expanding the whole document from within the Place panel, then selecting the pages to be flown, and clicking the desired spot (typically in the middle of the sole page of a new document) to have them auto-flown. In my experience placing gets easily slightly offset so it is often necessary to fix exact positioning. Luckily you can zoom out and select all pages of the document (left and right pages separately) in one go and then use the Transform panel to set the correct position.

[walt.farrell]

10 hours ago, R C-R said:

File > Open works fine but I can't get Place to autoflow to work, with or without using text frames -- no red triangle appears.

It should work as shown in the Tutorial, but you must get all the steps correct. Can you show us a video of what happens when you try?

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, lacerto said:

You can do this by expanding the whole document from within the Place panel...

Thanks! For some reason that panel was not appearing for me in APub until I quit & restarted the app.

Works OK now, but just using File > Open seems quicker & easier if I just want to create a new document from the PDF.