Publisher - Delete / Backspace key cycles styles rather than deleting

[Neil Parsons]

I find this issue intensely frustrating. Pressing the delete key at the start of a line should, in my view, delete that line and place the cursor at the end of the previous line as to does in every word processor etc that I use. Instead it cycles through the styles which I can't think is a useful feature.

[MikeTO]

Hi Neil, it doesn't do this for me. Perhaps you accidentally assigned the Delete key as a shortcut for styles?

Here's how to test to find out. Open Affinity Publisher > Settings (aka Preferences) and go to Shortcuts. Click in field to the right of About and press Delete. A backspace icon should appear. If you've assigned it to something else already a Yield icon will appear to its right. Mouse over that icon and it will tell you which command you've assigned it to. Then click the X to its right to clear it. Then find that other command in this window and do the same to it.

It is easy to assign Delete to a shortcut by mistake if you press Delete to clear a shortcut instead of clicking the X. I've done it several times.

Good luck.

[walt.farrell]

4 hours ago, Neil Parsons said:

which I can't think is a useful feature.

It can be useful, but it also depends on how you've defined the Text Styles. And it may also depend on the OS you're using.

Text styles can be defined as having Levels. E.g., Bullet 1 has a Next Level of Bullet 2, which has a Next Level of Bullet 3.

When you're in Bullet 1 text, you can configure Publisher to switch to Bullet 2 if you press Tab. And from Bullet 2 to switch to Bullet 3.

When you press Tab and it switches to Bullet 2, on Windows you can press Backspace to switch back to Bullet 1, though there are also other methods (Shift+Tab, or Text > List > Decrease Level). On a Mac, which typically doesn't have a Backspace key, Delete might do the same thing. (As I'm a Windows user, I can't be sure.)

So, it would help to see a sample .afpub document that demonstrates the problem, and we can examine the Text Styles and perhaps why you're seeing what you see. Or perhaps screenshots of the Text Style definitions, especially the top section of each that defines the Next Style and Next Level definitions.

 

[Neil Parsons]

Mike, Walt,

Thanks for your speedy replies. I checked the shortcuts and that definitely wasn't the issue - I guess it would have caused the same issue regardless of where delete was pressed whereas this actually only happened when the cursor was at the start of a line. I then checked over the paragraph and text styles to see if I could spot the issues given your guidance. Again I couldn't see anything obvious. What I did have though was a collection of unused paragraph styles, so I cleaned those up by deleting all unused styles and - hey presto the issue has vanished. I'm grateful or your help, it made me spend a bit more time investigating and that irksome feature has gone which I am very happy about despite not being entirely clear why! Thanks a lot