Problems with Publisher Beta 2.2.0

[Bob Terry]

I am using Publisher Beta 2.2.0 on my iMac (Catalina 10.15.7), and I've been encountering problems:

• Often when I click on the move tool to select text, the cursor cannot be seen and when text is selected, there is no blue bar indicating that selection. Then all of a sudden, the cursor reappears along with the section indication.
• I'm new with Affinity, moving away from InDesign because of the inordinate cost. I really am impressed, but I still have great difficulty. I edit a professional journal and am in the throes of preparing the next issue. I import Word documents (well, now I place them) in the template I've created. So far, the autoflow hasn't brought in the entire document. Importing tables from Word is almost impossible...and terribly frustrating!! It is not easy to create a new table and set up the various elements that I need.
• Surely there's an easier way to access the various features for text without having to click in several different places. Why can't features such as super/subscript be included on the main menu bar?

Maybe some of my problems stem from my older OS on my iMac. I'm using the public beta Ventura for my MacBook Pro and with this new beta version of Publisher and the beta update from Apple, things are going much better. But I can't upgrade my iMac so I'm stuck with an older OS.

I'm slowly learning Publisher and am so impressed. I'm sure that most of my "complaints" and comments are due to user error and newness on the scene.

Bob Terry

[MikeTO]

Hi Bob, I wonder if the first issue you reported, the missing cursor and text highlighting, is related to the other display issue you posted about.

I haven't experienced any issues with importing text and tables from MS Word, but perhaps my tables aren't as complex as yours. Could you share a sample docx file with a table here so that others can see the issues you're experiencing?

I don't know why super and subscript aren't on the main toolbar other than I imagine they're infrequently used by most people. I almost never choose those manually, Auto Correct takes care of superscripting text I type directly into Publisher and if it's from Word well then it would already be superscripted. Tip: You can open the Character panel quickly if it's closed by clicking the [a] icon in the Context Bar. If you leave the panel's Typography section open then that would give you access in two clicks.

Good luck!

[Bob Terry]

Here are 3 tables from the article I am currently working on. They have caused me enormous problems bringing them into Publisher Beta 2.2.0 (1971).

By the way, when I open the corrupted article file on my MacBook Pro (using Sonoma Beta), the same pages are corrupted. I guess I will just have to delete that portion of the text and try again!

Thanks for the help.

Terry-Sample tables.docx

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, Bob Terry said:

They have caused me enormous problems bringing them into Publisher Beta 2.2.0 (1971).

Do they work better in 2.1.1?

Edit: Also, one of them looks like it larger than a page. That won't work in Publisher, which doesn't support multi-page tables. Perhaps if you break it into separate tables it would work better.

[Bob Terry]

I can refuce the size to one-page tables. That’s not the problem. I can’t change cell configuration or spacing. I havent checked in the non-beta version. I cant open the file from beta in 2.1.1. 
 

 

[walt.farrell]

7 minutes ago, Bob Terry said:

I cant open the file from beta in 2.1.1. 

No, you can't, as expected. 

But can you import the tables into 2.1.1?

If your problem is really that you can't change the table configuration after the import, it would be better to share the .afpub file rather than the .docx file, I think.

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, Bob Terry said:

I can refuce the size to one-page tables. That’s not the problem. I can’t change cell configuration or spacing. I havent checked in the non-beta version. I cant open the file from beta in 2.1.1. 

If you split that last table into two it should import perfectly into the 2.2 beta. I got poor results importing it into 2.1.1 so perhaps something was changed in this regard.

As Walt said, the problem with that last table is that it's too large to fit into a text frame on a single letter/A4 page. This isn't a bug with importing from Word, it's because the object, the table, is too large to fit into the frame and Publisher can't split tables across pages automatically.

Here's a second option if you don't want to split the table in Word before importing. After pasting the text into the first frame it will be overflowed, there won't be room for all three tables in this document. Shift+click the Text Flow Out control's red triangle to AutoFlow the content to a second frame. That will leave you with a nice page 1 with the first two tables but the third table will still be too large to fit into the next frame. Now click the Text Flow Out control's "eye" icon on the overflowed last frame in the series. That will show the overflowed table. Now you can select it and resize it so that it fits into the frame. I tried this and it worked fine.

Good luck

[anto]

Go to File-->Place and select your docx file. You will have your tables in text frame. Then look at video.

You can create style for Table body and aplly it to all text in table.

To be honest, Publisher and tables are practically two incompatible things if you want copy/paste complex table from other apps. Publisher works only with simple tables.

 

 

Another BUG i discovered is that Publisher cannot resize a column if you change it from left to right.

 

[anto]

With 2.1.1 you will have some problems, but it works. After import create text style and aplly to text in table