What is remembered in export and print dialogs

[Sakarias Ingolfsson]

Hello

Although I am not very active on the forums, I am a long time Serif user. I have been using Publisher since PagePlus X5. 

Something that has bothered me for longer than I can remember, is that the Export dialog as well as the Print dialog remembers certain settings but not others. This sometimes results in me exporting more pages than intended, resulting in a full folder of files, or wore, printing many more pages than intended. It is especially annoying when it causes me to waste expensive paper. The reason for this is my own failure to change the range to "current page" every single time. Yet I would expect this is a setting that the print/export dialog should remember.  Is there some way of making Publisher remember, or if not, change the default setting? If it can be done through the Windows registry I am fine with that.

Also, perhaps someone might be interested in mapping which settings in these dialogs Affinity remembers and which it does not?

Regards,
Sakarias

[MikeTO]

2 hours ago, Sakarias Ingolfsson said:

Something that has bothered me for longer than I can remember, is that the Export dialog as well as the Print dialog remembers certain settings but not others. This sometimes results in me exporting more pages than intended, resulting in a full folder of files, or wore, printing many more pages than intended. It is especially annoying when it causes me to waste expensive paper. The reason for this is my own failure to change the range to "current page" every single time. Yet I would expect this is a setting that the print/export dialog should remember.  Is there some way of making Publisher remember, or if not, change the default setting? If it can be done through the Windows registry I am fine with that.

Also, perhaps someone might be interested in mapping which settings in these dialogs Affinity remembers and which it does not?

Hi and welcome to the forums. It is confusing which settings are and are not remembered in Export but Affinity offers presets for Export. Just create a preset for the options you want and then it will remember all of them.

As for Print, I realize you're on Windows but the macOS Print dialog always resets Range to all pages every time you choose Print and Affinity uses Apple's Print dialog on macOS. Serif might just be following the Mac standard with its Windows print dialog or maybe that's the Windows standard, too, I don't recall now although I wasted many, many trees with PowerPoint so it's likely the Windows way, too.

On macOS, the Print dialog offers a "Last Used Settings" option which if you remember to use it will do exactly what we want. I never remember so it only saves me from wasting trees when I need to print it more than twice.

[Sakarias Ingolfsson]

Thank you for an insightful reply

Perhaps you are right about the standards. I guess Acrobat is the same way. It remembers the layout settings but not range or number of copies. That is a disappointing realization, although I admit that it does make sense.

Hopefully I will not be working on a large document next time I make this error.

[Catshill]

On 8/7/2023 at 2:44 PM, MikeTO said:

Just create a preset for the options you want and then it will remember all of them.

But it doesn’t unfortunately. AKA the previously mentioned, Export as Spreads is always returned, regardless of any preset or last used choice.

[MikeTO]

30 minutes ago, Catshill said:

But it doesn’t unfortunately. AKA the previously mentioned, Export as Spreads is always returned, regardless of any preset or last used choice.

I wasn't experiencing that with my own presets but I've only changed a few things from an existing preset. I tested it some more now and I see what you mean about export as spreads instead of as pages. That setting doesn't seem to be saveable.

I found that at least these options aren't saveable. 

• Raster DPI
• Area (spread vs. pages, the on you mentioned) - I see why it was excluded, not all documents have spreads, but surely there is a way to solve this
• Pages (specific page numbers) - this makes sense because it would be document specific.
• Size - again this makes sense as it would be document specific
• Require Password to Open
• Master Password Required

But then I started noticing that some settings are saveable but changing them alone doesn't allow you to save a preset. You have to change something else to trigger the availability of the Save Preset feature. For example, changing just Pixel Format won't let you save a preset but if you change Resample then you can save a present and whatever you chose for Pixel Format will be saved. It's rather odd.

[Catshill]

8 hours ago, MikeTO said:

I wasn't experiencing that with my own presets but I've only changed a few things from an existing preset. I tested it some more now and I see what you mean about export as spreads instead of as pages. That setting doesn't seem to be saveable.

I found that at least these options aren't saveable. 

• Raster DPI
• Area (spread vs. pages, the on you mentioned) - I see why it was excluded, not all documents have spreads, but surely there is a way to solve this
• Pages (specific page numbers) - this makes sense because it would be document specific.
• Size - again this makes sense as it would be document specific
• Require Password to Open
• Master Password Required

But then I started noticing that some settings are saveable but changing them alone doesn't allow you to save a preset. You have to change something else to trigger the availability of the Save Preset feature. For example, changing just Pixel Format won't let you save a preset but if you change Resample then you can save a present and whatever you chose for Pixel Format will be saved. It's rather odd.

It’s a common issue when I send my commercial printer a pdf that is in spreads not pages because I forgot to change the setting back again. Very frustrating.

[MikeTO]

I believe this should be tagged as AF-86