Hangman Posted October 1, 2023 Share Posted October 1, 2023 Is the expectation when adding a hyperlink to an external file in Publisher that the linked file is a PDF or can it be any file format, e.g., a .docx file? As far as I can tell the help section and the reference in @MikeTO's Publisher guide don't stipulate either way... Help Section For a file link, tick Include File on Export to have Publisher create a copy of the file alongside the PDF (when exporting to a PDF version that supports hyperlinks). Mike's Reference File: click the More icon to browse to a file on your computer, which if you select the additional option to Include file on export will be linked with a relative URL in the exported PDF file so they can be uploaded together; if you don’t select Include file on export then an absolute URL to the file on your computer will be used. Quote Affinity Designer 2.5.5 | Affinity Photo 2.5.5 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.5 Affinity Designer Beta 2.6.0.2861 | Affinity Photo Beta 2.6.0.2861 | Affinity Publisher Beta 2.6.0.2861 MacBook Pro M3 Max, 36 GB Unified Memory, macOS Sonoma 14.6.1, Magic Mouse HP ENVY x360, 8 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 5 2500U, Windows 10 Home, Logitech Mouse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted October 1, 2023 Share Posted October 1, 2023 Are you having a problem with a .docx file that you've hyperlinked when you follow Mike's instructions? Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeTO Posted October 1, 2023 Share Posted October 1, 2023 It only works with PDF but I see I failed to note that in the manual. I will add that for the next update. IMO this was intended just for PDF but I could see why somebody might want to use a different format. You can get it to work with some filetypes if you check the Include on export feature. I tried it just now for docx and it doesn't work for that. Quote Download a free PDF manual for Affinity Publisher 2.5 Download a quick reference chart for Affinity's Special Characters Affinity 2.5 for macOS Sequoia 15.2, MacBook Pro 14" (M4 Pro) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hangman Posted October 1, 2023 Author Share Posted October 1, 2023 Hi @MikeTO, That's what I assumed so just wanted to clarify since for me any other hyperlinked file format throws up an export error and if hyperlinked as part of a book it crashes Publisher but I couldn't find anything in any documentation that stipulated the hyperlinked file has to be a pdf... To date, I've only tried it with a .docx and tiff file and neither worked. Quote Affinity Designer 2.5.5 | Affinity Photo 2.5.5 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.5 Affinity Designer Beta 2.6.0.2861 | Affinity Photo Beta 2.6.0.2861 | Affinity Publisher Beta 2.6.0.2861 MacBook Pro M3 Max, 36 GB Unified Memory, macOS Sonoma 14.6.1, Magic Mouse HP ENVY x360, 8 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 5 2500U, Windows 10 Home, Logitech Mouse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeTO Posted October 1, 2023 Share Posted October 1, 2023 I tried it with PNG, JPG, and SVG, too. They will export as long as you select include on export. If you don't you'll get an error. Apple Preview may not be able to open these links but other PDF viewers should be able to. I spent a lot of time playing with this feature because I didn't understand the purpose at first. I would always use URL but that creates an absolute URL. If Include on Export isn't selected then this feature will use absolute URLs, too, which makes it useless for uploading an exported PDF to a website or sharing through email. If you were linking to a file on an internal network then you could send the file to somebody else on the network. But if you check Include on Export it bundles the files in the same directory and generates relative URLs. That means you could upload the exported PDF and the linked files as a bundle to a website or zip it up to email to somebody. I think the feature is of limited usefulness but it's an option for those who need it. I would never use it without selecting Include on Export though. Quote Download a free PDF manual for Affinity Publisher 2.5 Download a quick reference chart for Affinity's Special Characters Affinity 2.5 for macOS Sequoia 15.2, MacBook Pro 14" (M4 Pro) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hangman Posted October 1, 2023 Author Share Posted October 1, 2023 24 minutes ago, walt.farrell said: Are you having a problem with a .docx file that you've hyperlinked when you follow Mike's instructions? Hi @walt.farrell, @MikeTO beat me to it as I was replying to your question... walt.farrell 1 Quote Affinity Designer 2.5.5 | Affinity Photo 2.5.5 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.5 Affinity Designer Beta 2.6.0.2861 | Affinity Photo Beta 2.6.0.2861 | Affinity Publisher Beta 2.6.0.2861 MacBook Pro M3 Max, 36 GB Unified Memory, macOS Sonoma 14.6.1, Magic Mouse HP ENVY x360, 8 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 5 2500U, Windows 10 Home, Logitech Mouse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hangman Posted October 1, 2023 Author Share Posted October 1, 2023 13 minutes ago, MikeTO said: I tried it with PNG, JPG, and SVG, too. They will export as long as you select include on export. If you don't you'll get an error. Apple Preview may not be able to open these links but other PDF viewers should be able to. I've just tested with some JPEGs and these do indeed work (as do Tiff files when included on export) so now I'm trying to understand the logic of certain file formats working while others don't, i.e., why graphic file formats PNG, JPG, TIFF and SVG work but .docx .xlsx etc. don't. Is this actually by design or a bug? The fact that certain file formats simply crash Publisher makes me wonder whether it is actually the latter as I can't immediately think of any logical reason for Office file formats to be excluded... Linking a .mp3 file works quite happily... Quote Affinity Designer 2.5.5 | Affinity Photo 2.5.5 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.5 Affinity Designer Beta 2.6.0.2861 | Affinity Photo Beta 2.6.0.2861 | Affinity Publisher Beta 2.6.0.2861 MacBook Pro M3 Max, 36 GB Unified Memory, macOS Sonoma 14.6.1, Magic Mouse HP ENVY x360, 8 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 5 2500U, Windows 10 Home, Logitech Mouse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted October 1, 2023 Share Posted October 1, 2023 11 minutes ago, Hangman said: so now I'm trying to understand the logic of certain file formats working while others don't, Formats that we'd expect a PDF viewer to handle work, others don't? Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hangman Posted October 1, 2023 Author Share Posted October 1, 2023 1 hour ago, walt.farrell said: Formats that we'd expect a PDF viewer to handle work, others don't? Though we wouldn't be expecting a PDF viewer to open the hyperlinked file, rather the relevant application e.g., Word, Excel etc. in the same way we can add a hyperlink directly to a PDF file that then opens a Word or Excel document in Word or Excel... though arguably that may be using a file: URL. Quote Affinity Designer 2.5.5 | Affinity Photo 2.5.5 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.5 Affinity Designer Beta 2.6.0.2861 | Affinity Photo Beta 2.6.0.2861 | Affinity Publisher Beta 2.6.0.2861 MacBook Pro M3 Max, 36 GB Unified Memory, macOS Sonoma 14.6.1, Magic Mouse HP ENVY x360, 8 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 5 2500U, Windows 10 Home, Logitech Mouse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hangman Posted October 1, 2023 Author Share Posted October 1, 2023 The other thought with regards to supported file formats is, should non supported formats be greyed out and therefore non selectable in the first place. Currently any file format can be added as a hyperlink and Publisher accepts it without any preflight errors but only fails on export… Just curious and fully accept the current behaviour may be expected. Quote Affinity Designer 2.5.5 | Affinity Photo 2.5.5 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.5 Affinity Designer Beta 2.6.0.2861 | Affinity Photo Beta 2.6.0.2861 | Affinity Publisher Beta 2.6.0.2861 MacBook Pro M3 Max, 36 GB Unified Memory, macOS Sonoma 14.6.1, Magic Mouse HP ENVY x360, 8 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 5 2500U, Windows 10 Home, Logitech Mouse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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