Unofficial PDF Manual - Expert Guide to Affinity Publisher

[MikeTO]

Updated for Publisher 2.4 (February 2024)

This free in-depth manual is filled with steps, tips, and recommendations for:

• Documents, Pages, Master Pages, Sections, and Baseline Grid
• Character and Paragraph Formatting
• Text Styles (paragraph and character)
• Text Frames, Text Flow, and Stories
• Images and Picture Frames
• Books and Chapters
• Cross-References, Table of Contents, and Index
• Notes - including Footnotes, Sidenotes, and Endnotes
• Fields - including Page Numbering, Running Headers, and Custom Variables
• Anchors and Hyperlinks
• Printing and Exporting
• Settings

This manual does not cover objects, drawing, photo editing, or the other artistic features.

Download:

Publisher Manual Feb 26 2024.pdf

Q&A

• Is this really free? Yes, I'm making it available free of charge. It's copyrighted to prevent others from publishing it as their own.
• Is there a longer manual I can purchase? No, this is it.
• Is there an iPad version? No, the steps and screenshots are for the macOS and Windows versions.
• Is there a version for Designer or Photo? No, but many of the features are the same so you should still find it useful.
• Why does it use a print layout if it's a PDF? It's a demonstration of how to use the features it describes to create a print book.

Previous version for 2.3:

Publisher Manual Nov 29 2023.pdf

Edited February 28 by MikeTO
Updated with new version

[Return]

Thanks @MikeTO is this an ongoing project or are you treating this as is?

[thomaso]

Wow, what an impressive amount of work – and with a practical, sophisticated layout concept, too! 👍

30 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

especially the Books feature

I just ran into a little confusion on page 50. There one illustration + caption seems to be an unintentional duplicate. I've read that part several times and feel like I don't quite understand it. Was the second intended to show more of a situation of moved pages in the panel and possible consequences to the text flow? Or is rather the first one meant to show just a simple example of a single story?

[Patrick Connor]

Well done MikeTO, this must have been loads of work. Feel free to post it in Resources as well

[Felix Kasza]

Thank you! Thank you very, very much!

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, Return said:

Thanks @MikeTO is this an ongoing project or are you treating this as is?

I'm unsure. I just intended to explain the Books feature since it's so difficult to know if it's the right choice for your project until you've broken your book into chapter files. And if it turns out it was the wrong choice, it's hard to put the chapters back together again. I need to get back to my other book project but I imagine I'll expand this a bit in the future when I feel an itch to document a feature. I added the section on keyboard shortcuts yesterday while waiting for the release of 2.2.

22 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I just ran into a little confusion on page 50. There one illustration + caption seems to be an unintentional duplicate.

Thanks for catching this. If I had been sending this to print I would have engaged proofreaders but since this was a free project I knew there would be some copy/paste mistakes like this. Here's what the first example should have been, I will change this in the first update.

14 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

Well done MikeTO, this must have been loads of work. Feel free to post it in Resources as well

Will do, thanks.

[TrentL]

This is pretty amazing, @MikeTO! You should at least put this on GumRoad or something like that. You can even list it there for $0 and allow the customer to pay something if they choose. 

[Hilltop]

Thank you for this wonderful resource, Mike!

[Paul Mudditt]

Awesome work @MikeTO !! Thank you very much !!

[pruus]

Great work, thanks for sharing!

[Bryan Rieger]

Wow @MikeTO this is phenomenal. Thanks for sharing this. Not only is it a pleasure to read, not only can I add notes and annotations, but I'm also learning a ton. Kudos!

[PaoloT]

What an incredible work! Congratulation, and thank you!
Maybe I’ve found a little mistake when you explain the Lanczos algorithms. In the current text, one is the slowest, but the other one is slower!

Paolo

 

[ATP]

Very professional, fantastic work you've done here.

[Huby]

Thank you very much for this great work!

[AllanP]

@MikeTO - Thank you for this great informative guide.

The Serif/Affinity Help pages and video tutorials are good, but your Expert Guide really delves in and puts things inbto perspective and details the process of using AfPub's Books feature. and associated techniques.

Well done!!!

[Agie]

Thank you ❤️

[AdamW]

@MikeTO - I'll start off by admitting I have not had a chance to read this cover to cover - so far I have merely dipped in and skimmed in a few places. However what I have seen seems very well presented, informative and accurate. I would like to thank you for making this available as a free resource and also take this opportunity to thank you for your contribution on the beta forums which has been both notable and significant.

Adam Whitehouse

Project Manager, Affinity Publisher

[MikeTO]

Thanks for the positive feedback everybody! I'll update the PDF next week with any corrections to issues you've reported. Follow this thread to get notified through the forums when an updated version is available.

13 hours ago, PaoloT said:

Maybe I’ve found a little mistake when you explain the Lanczos algorithms. In the current text, one is the slowest, but the other one is slower!

It's confusingly worded so I'll rephrase it. FYI, "Lanczos 3 (separable)" is higher quality but slower than the options listed above it in the manual and "Lanczos 3 (non-separable)" is similar in quality to "Lanczos 3 (separable)" but slightly slower. For most users, and unless you have a slow computer, "Lanczos 3 (separable)" is probably your best choice of quality and speed and there's little reason to ever change this setting.

Cheers,

Mike

[Paul Mudditt]

2 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Thanks for the positive feedback everybody! I'll update the PDF next week with any corrections to issues you've reported. Follow this thread to get notified through the forums when an updated version is available.

It's confusingly worded so I'll rephrase it. FYI, "Lanczos 3 (separable)" is higher quality but slower than the options listed above it in the manual and "Lanczos 3 (non-separable)" is similar in quality to "Lanczos 3 (separable)" but slightly slower. For most users, and unless you have a slow computer, "Lanczos 3 (separable)" is probably your best choice of quality and speed and there's little reason to ever change this setting.

Cheers,

Mike

Hope you don’t mind but I shared a link to your post above to a few of the Affinity facebook groups I loiter in, you have made many people very happy ! 

[Oufti]

2 hours ago, MikeTO said:

I'll update the PDF next week with any corrections to issues you've reported.

Hi @MikeTO and thank you for this inappreciable help tool! 

 

There are indeed some things that disturbed me during my first paces with Affinity's TOC, and that I have not seen in your manual. So I dare to align some suggestions there about… 

p.80 (88) You wrote: — "You can use the same TOC style for all of the tables of contents or a different one for each table."

I would add that if you want TOCs each with a different set of heading styles to be included in, you HAVE TO create new TOC styles.
[Reading further, that's more or less explained in next section, on p.95 (87) but not so explicitly IMHO.]

And to go further in that TOC chapter : 

 p.89 (81) — "Tip: Publisher creates the table of contents text styles for you; while you can redefine the character and paragraph attributes of these styles, do not rename them because the modified name will not be shown"

+ If you want to rename them, rename instead the TOC style itself (in the TOC panel). Change will be reflected in corresponding text styles. 
[Actually explained on p.95 (87).]

p.90 (82) — "5.  Select (.) Tab stop leader character from the list."

+ Or click on the ellipse button , so you can use any characters you want. 

The rest of this chapter seems irreproachable to my eyes… 

Thanks again Mike!

[debraspicher]

On 9/19/2023 at 8:43 AM, TrentL said:

This is pretty amazing, @MikeTO! You should at least put this on GumRoad or something like that. You can even list it there for $0 and allow the customer to pay something if they choose. 

I've not read through (thoroughly) to see if there's been mention of this, but I'd also like the ability to compensate the author.

[MikeTO]

20 hours ago, debraspicher said:

...I'd also like the ability to compensate the author.

Thanks but I did this for fun, not profit. I'd charge for it only if I ever write a full manual because then I'd have to write about the features that I have less interest in.

21 hours ago, Oufti said:

p.80 (88)

p.89 (81)

p.90 (82)

Thanks, I've made the first and third changes for the next version. I'm going to leave the middle one as is (don't rename text styles for a TOC) because it's just a "don't do it" tip and I want the tips to be as short as possible.

Thanks!!

[Archangel]

Cheers, Mike. This is excellent

On 9/19/2023 at 12:26 PM, MikeTO said:

Learn how to publish books and other long documents with Affinity Publisher 2.2. This in-depth manual is filled with steps, tips, and recommendations for:

• Books and Chapters
• Documents, Pages, Master Pages, Sections, and Baseline Grid
• Text Frames, Text Flow, and Stories
• Cross-References, Table of Contents, and Index
• Notes - including Footnotes, Sidenotes, and Endnotes
• Fields - including Page Numbering, Running Headers, and Custom Variables
• Anchors and Hyperlinks

This manual does not cover text formatting, graphics, printing, and many other core features. It is intended to explain the advanced features that you’ll need to publish a long document, especially the Books feature introduced in version 2.

Publisher Manual Sep 18 2023.pdf 12.8 MB · 1,296 downloads

Q&A

• Is there a full manual I can purchase? No, this is all there is.
• Is this really free? Yes, I'm making it available free of charge. It's copyrighted to prevent others from publishing it as their own.
• Is there an iPad version? No, the steps and screenshots are for the macOS and Windows versions.
• Why does it use a print layout if it's a PDF? It's a demonstration of how to use the features it describes to create a print book.

.

[Oufti]

4 hours ago, MikeTO said:

I'm going to leave the middle one as is (don't rename text styles for a TOC) because it's just a "don't do it" tip and I want the tips to be as short as possible.

Thanks. I understand.

Would adding only this: "don't rename text styles for a TOC, rename instead the TOC style (in the TOC panel)" also be too long? 

— I dare to insist since I've not seen that relationship between TOC text styles names and TOC styles names explicated elsewhere. (i.e. TOC text styles are named according to the TOC style and the heading styles.)
I remember how I struggled with all those confounding TOC1, 2, 3 texte style names, trying to base one on the formatting of another (*), before I understood that I could change and simplify these text style names via the TOC style name. 

Or perhaps is there a better suited place for that precision?

[PaoloT]

On 9/21/2023 at 10:40 PM, MikeTO said:

I'd charge for it only if I ever write a full manual because then I'd have to write about the features that I have less interest in.

Ok, but those are also those boring parts for which we wouldn't want to pay for! 😁

Paolo