Publisher 2.1: Page re-numbering in books not working

[marbel]

For the system spec, see below.

After updating to 2.1.0, publisher won't update page numbering for books anymore. I can reproduce it with new documents. Here's how:

1. Create new document (I used A4, no changes)
2. Save it (e.g. "A4_1")
3. Create another new document (A4)
4. Save it (e.g. "A4_2")
5. Create a new book
6. Add both new documents
7. You will see both chapter files with their page numbers
   1. First: 1-10
   2. Second: 11-20
8. Now drag&drop the second to first place, they won't get the page numbers renewed:
   1. First: 11-20
   2. Second: 1-10
9. You can click the renew numbering button, but nothing will happen

I also attached the created docs and book for your reference.

BTW: It was working in 2.0.4.

----------

Using latest released version 2.1.0 of Publisher
OS: Windows 10 22H2
Hardware acceleration: On

book.afbook A4_1.afpub A4_2.afpub

[Lee D]

Thanks for your report, I've logged this with the developers to take a look.

[Deeleres]

Hi, same problem here, renumbering from the book panel does not work as expected.
Open that file with that problem from the Book Panel freezes the Publisher, or it opens the document but your can't edit anything.  

At the moment I can handle it with workaround by opening the probematic document directly and edit the page numbering manually in the sections dialog. After that and on any additions it renumbers the pages correcly again - so far.

--

Publisher 2.1.0 on Windows 10 22H2

Greetings

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "Page re-numbering using Books panel not working" (REF: AFB-7758) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.2.0.1857".
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.

[natecombsmedia]

Hi there,

Installing the Publisher Beta did not help me with numbering. My books stopped updating numbers properly with the last update as well, but I have been doing it manually. Tonight, it started freaking out and reverting numbers to their original starting points (I usually save new chapters from previous left/right chapter documents). It undoes my manual work in regular and beta Publisher versions. Please help. @Serif Info Bot

[natecombsmedia]

What's worse is I tried it in Beta with a separate book file saved specifically for Beta...and now none of my document files will open in the original Publisher as it believes them to be from a later version. And I hadn't copied the last few chapter documents to my backup drive yet.

After a few crashes and some things not wanting to open in a specific way/order, I was able to find what seems to be a solution. The dropdown menu in the Books panel has a "Page Numbering Options" menu that only activates when a single chapter is selected. Going into that one by one and selecting "continue from previous chapter" has my numbers steady again.

[dr john williams]

I have the same problem with v 2.1.1. The book numbering is all over the place with chapters in the list having numbers out of sequence and chapter numbering overlapping. Updating numbers does not work. The first chapter has 7 pages but numbering starts at 67. I have two chapters with 67 as the page number! 67-74 overlaps other chapter numbering in the list Cannot find any setting that can correct this.

When I select the first chapter , numbered 67-74 and then use the books panel>Page numbering option and click start numbering from page 1. The first chapter numbers do not change. I can use the Page numbering option for other chapters but although I can set the correct number for that chapter, the next chapter in the list repeats the same number sequence ignoring the chapter that had been updated.

John

 

[natecombsmedia]

3 hours ago, dr john williams said:

When I select the first chapter , numbered 67-74 and then use the books panel>Page numbering option and click start numbering from page 1. The first chapter numbers do not change. I can use the Page numbering option for other chapters but although I can set the correct number for that chapter, the next chapter in the list repeats the same number sequence ignoring the chapter that had been updated.

Hi John, it looks like you saw my solution and started getting it to work. First chapters are definitely unique. I always set those in (I believe) the document settings or a similar area of the document itself long before I create a book. I'd have to look to give exact steps. 

I always make the second document in the book the master file (little key icon that can be placed to the left of one doc on the books panel) since it is chapter one for most projects. Not sure if that makes a difference on what I'm doing, but once that is done, I have to go in and do the page numbering options explained above on every single doc, from the second until the end, and save the book.

I will note that setting the page number did not work for me. I'm like 90% sure I tried that. It had to be the "continue numbering from previous" option.

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, natecombsmedia said:

I will note that setting the page number did not work for me. I'm like 90% sure I tried that. It had to be the "continue numbering from previous" option.

For a Book, the first section in each chapter document will always be "start on page X", the "continue numbering" option is not available. This is how the auto numbering system works for Books, it sets the first section of each document to start on a specific page number.

[natecombsmedia]

1 minute ago, MikeTO said:

For a Book, the first section in each chapter document will always be "start on page X", the "continue numbering" option is not available. This is how the auto numbering system works for Books, it sets the first section of each document to start on a specific page number.

You don't set it in sections. That's only for sections within a document. You're setting the whole document to continue based on the previous document in the page numbering options in the book panel's menu.

[MikeTO]

14 minutes ago, natecombsmedia said:

You don't set it in sections. That's only for sections within a document. You're setting the whole document to continue based on the previous document in the page numbering options in the book panel's menu.

Sorry, I was confused for a moment there.

[natecombsmedia]

Just now, MikeTO said:

Sorry, I was confused for a moment there.

No worries 😆 the new stuff is still confusing. It took me forever to find this workaround. I tried with sections literally like 10 times.

PLUS, the page numbering options I did find was greyed out every time I tried until I had only one document selected. That was the key ingredient for me.

[dr john williams]

Thanks. I discarded the book file and started loading chapters from scratch in order. That worked Ok with  page numbers in sequence. But when I move a chapter up in the book the page numbers do not change when I click Update numbers. They retain the page numbers when first ordered, so are mixed up. So unsure how to sole this

The program is unstable at times as if has frozen at the Updating numbers dialogue box and task manager is the only way out.

 

John 

[dr john williams]

Just loaded some chapters into a new book. up to chapter 4 sequence Ok and chapter 4 numbered 27-30, loaded another chapter after chapter 4 and the page numbers are 29-29! Update numbers function does nothing

John

[natecombsmedia]

Update numbers has been broken unless you "route" it a certain way in the latest versions; however, you should be able to fix the moving of the order of chapters manually.

Highlight a single chapter after moving it. Go into the = menu on the book panel for more options. Select page numbering options. Change it to the option that continues from previous chapter.

Every document after that will be broken. Do that to each document individually. Once they are all set to this, the update page numbers button will magically work.

Let me know if you get it!

[Lee D]

@dr john williams Have you tried the 2.2 Publisher beta to see if you experience the same issues with page numbering?

If not, you can sign up for the beta here to give it a go. If it is still an issue, we may need to get a copy of your files and confirm your workflow to see if we can reproduce the issue.

[dr john williams]

i am using the version 2.2 beta and it seems so far to be working ok when I move chapters, or add/remove pages.

However I have noticed strange behaviour with end notes which do not update correctly when there is renumbering in the body text. I'll start a new topic about this.

Thanks

John

[marbel]

@Lee D I just tried the beta 2.2 (1954). With newly created documents it is working now. But: I copied a document of my book and added the copy to the end of the book. For that document, Publisher won't update the numbering. The numbers from the original document remain in the copy.

I now removed all content from the document, you can find it attached. Its a book with 2 chapter documents, which both are binary identical.

Would be great if this can also be fixed soon. Thanks!

Markus

Book.afbook Chapter 1.afpub Chapter 2.afpub

[natecombsmedia]

18 minutes ago, marbel said:

@Lee D I just tried the beta 2.2 (1954). With newly created documents it is working now. But: I copied a document of my book and added the copy to the end of the book. For that document, Publisher won't update the numbering. The numbers from the original document remain in the copy.

That's super interesting. The other day, I had to update some older books to match newer books in the series. I found that books made in the first iterations of AP2 had no issues as their original documents could retain the proper number updating code, but the newer ones from the last few updates had all the issues we have been seeing.

Anyway, I have responded to a few of these posts with abstract instructions since I was always away from my studio, but I am here now and will throw together a simple video of how to solve *theoretically* in any version, beta or not.

Affinity Team, @Lee D, feel free to use this video to show people the workaround until the new version is released/for people with older documents.

[marbel]

@natecombsmedia In fact, that solves the issue!

This means, copying an existing document sets a fix start page number for that document? I wouldn't expect that to happen! That's why I didn't check that numbering option...

Once I change it as per your video, it is working fine.

Thanks for the hint!

[SteveMcDonald]

What causes it?

I finally convinced myself that a page numbering glitch was a bug and found this thread.

I just had a single instance where one page number not only ended one chapter but started the next. Initially, the last page of Chapter_N was blank. The first page of Chapter_N+1 was numbered the same as the last page of Chapter_N. I put some content on the last page of Chapter_N to no effect. (It might not be relevant.) Auto renumbering wouldn't change it.

This thread caused me to look at the 'start chapter with (page#)' setting on Chapter_N+1. Now, I had never touched that setting before. In all the chapters leading up to Chapter_N+1 the setting is 'Continue from previous chapter.'

So, what causes it?

My contention is that the duplicate page numbers should never have happened, but having happened, If preflight can't fix it (I can see reasons for that), preflight should tell me that I have a duplicate page number issue, and what caused it. 

@natecombsmedia, you're my hero until someone resolves my next issue.

[vikingtone]

Is Page numbering update supposedly working now?  because I have a major problem if it is.

I have a book document of more than 100 small chapters.  The numbers are wrong from the beginning, because I had to add a page to allow a growing TOC to flow. The subsequent numbering then showed the following chapter as starting on the same number as the last page of the previous one.  I can fix that chapter by changing the 'start page on #'  to 'follow on from previous chapter,'  and it works. For that chapter. But then the problem has simply migrated down to the next chapter.

Is it suggested herein that I have to go through every single chapter to change that setting?  The setting was on 'follow on' prior to 'fixing' one chapter, but then is altered by the app to a fixed page number, which is disastrous.

If there is a real fix, I'd be very grateful to know it, thanks

 

[Hangman]

Hi @vikingtone,

On a copy of your file, just to quickly test, try physically selecting all the relevant Chapters in the Books panel so they're all highlighted prior to updating the Page Numbers...

[vikingtone]

Thanks Hangman (like the celtic sigil, btw )  yes, I have figured out that if not selected the update is jettisoned.  No warning it's done nothing, just does nothing.  But when all selected it appears to go through the process, but it observes the instruction to start at a fixed number  -  which the app set itself.  Really disappointing, when I have well over 100 chapters and approaching 800 pages.  I don't know what to do, really.  If I have to add any more chapters anywhere in the stack, the number will be wrong, again, it's going to be a gigantic task to finish building the book, then go through every single chapter to reset the numbers.  I am very disappointed such a fundamental need is broken.

thanks again

[vikingtone]

Thanks again Hangman.   I watched your screen capture, and it looks like it's OK for you.

I made a new book of only 5 chapters.  Every chapter is set in the 'Page Numbering Options' to  'start numbering at'  and a fixed #.  So, nothing I do allows numbering update to work unless I go into every chapter and change Page Numbering Options to 'follow on.'    It will be 170 chapters by the time I finish.

If I build the book and update every single chapter, and then my guy wants to add another couple of pages, I reckon I'll have to change every chapter again  -  because that setting 'Start Numbers at'  is being set that way by the app.

I can't describe how difficult I am finding this to process.

 

thanks again

t