Can I move headings easily to a separate layer?

[anchinnk]

I'm formatting a 300-page book as a self-imposed way of learning the essentials of Publisher, like headings, toC, cross-references etc. 

I've defined a number of chapter headings as Heading 1 but I'd like to move them all to a separate layer to enable me to manipulate other sections of copy without affecting the headings. Is this possible? I'd be grateful for any assistance.

AH

 

[Callum]

Hi Anchinnk,

Its difficult to say without seeing your file however it sounds likely that the only way to do this would be by copying and pasting the headings into a new text boxes.

Thanks
C

[thomaso]

5 hours ago, anchinnk said:

I'd like to move them all to a separate layer to enable me to manipulate other sections of copy without affecting the headings. Is this possible?

What kind of edits? – Note, in the "Find and Replace" panel* you can limit the search to a certain saved text style or selected style properties which enables you to limit any "Replace" to the body copy style for instance.

* cog icon > "Format" > …

[anchinnk]

@Callum...Thanks for the hint. I'll try that later this evening.

@thomaso...I started this project to learn the ropes...and realised after a few hours the copy was not assigned to any style. It's "No style". 

NOW I'm learning

Ideally I'd like to replace all the "No style" assignments with the proper style I've defined for the copy. If there were no chapter headings, I could just mark all and assign the right style globally. I'm trying to avoid mucking up the headings with the wrong style by shoving them onto a separate layer, hiding that and then assigning the right style to the body of text. It's quite possible this is a road to nowhere and I'll start all over again and do things in the right order. 

Your suggestion with search and replace is interesting because one of the styles it lists is "No style". But then I'd have to say *.* in search and some clever regex or something in the replace box (with the correct style). I suspect this is clunky to say the least. 

The easiest way might be to start again, or am I missing something?

AH

[thomaso]

18 minutes ago, anchinnk said:

Your suggestion with search and replace is interesting because one of the styles it lists is "No style". But then I'd have to say *.* in search and some clever regex or something in the replace box (with the correct style). I suspect this is clunky to say the least. 

Not necessarily. If you leave the text fields empty you can use F&R to assign just styles. This enables you to replace every "No style" text with a wanted saved style.

[anchinnk]

@thomaso

That sounds good, thomaso, but...

I selected "No style" paragraph style in "Find", "Normal book copy" in "Replace with". If I then click "Find" it only finds the page numbering on that page, whereas there are actually several paragraphs on that page and spread that are "No style". I have already applied "Normal book copy" to the first couple of paragraphs. What I don't get is why the paragraphs with "Normal book copy" assigned still show "No style" at the bottom of the Styles pane. That is obviously a character style rather than a paragraph style. Does that matter?

[thomaso]

10 hours ago, anchinnk said:

If I then click "Find" it only finds the page numbering on that page, whereas there are actually several paragraphs on that page and spread that are "No style".

The layout screenshot shows the page number and the text with different styles. The page number might be the default Arial 12, the text is not.

Don't forget, instead searching for a saved style name you can also choose in F&R selectively certain style properties, for instance a font family, or a family + weight or a certain size etc.

10 hours ago, anchinnk said:

What I don't get is why the paragraphs with "Normal book copy" assigned still show "No style" at the bottom of the Styles pane. That is obviously a character style rather than a paragraph style. Does that matter?

Every character in the layout has a paragraph and a character style. Usually text has a custom saved paragraph style assigned and shows 'No Style' as its character style. Means for your screenshot: It does not matter (= is usual) that your paragraph style also shows the character style No Style – but the difference between paragraph and character style does generally matter. It can get confusing if you don't care about the difference and, for instance, apply a character style to an entire paragraph, story or document with the idea it would behave like a paragraph style.

Furthermore keep in mind that Affinity allows to apply a paragraph style as character style, which may lead to two paragraph style names being highlighted in the Text Styles panel for an according text selection.

Also note the '+' symbol that may appear here or there in the UI behind a style name. It indicates that this style is assigned but also/additionally another, deviating property is assigned to override the (parent) style. Not only Affinity can't show correct settings if text with differently deviating assigned properties is selected but also has no feature to highlight overrides in the text or to search literally for overrides. That means if you assign styles without using the saved styles of the panel it may become hard to detect deviations if you plan to switch your workflow at a later time to use saved styles.

Another confusion may happen if you use the quite useful style property of "Based on" or "Next Style". If you then change a parameter of an involved style it can affect more than this currently selected style. This makes this feature so useful and possibly confusing at the same time.