Publisher: Crash and "The file is not an Affinity document"

[Hugo Ahrens]

Been working on an import from word (about 140 pages) on windows 11, Publisher 2.3 over several days (multiple saves with no comment). Was checking the preflight spell errors (trying to find why so many errors, related to a missing dictionary). After the crash will not open the file causing the above error statement, even though it is an AFBOOK file (size 184kb). Restarted system, now I'm stuck.

[walt.farrell]

As it's a .afbook file, how are you trying to Open it? If you aren't doing it from the Book panel, I would try that.

By the way, a .afbook file has relatively little information. Most of the information is within the .afpub files that contain the chapter text. I hope you're Saving those, too. 

 

[Hugo Ahrens]

Yes, thanks Walt, I am trying to open it from the Book panel. And that is news to me, I have to save content separately from the book?

[walt.farrell]

27 minutes ago, Hugo Ahrens said:

I have to save content separately from the book?

Yes, though you can do it from the panel preferences (Burger menu) of the Book panel. 

It's also important, in my opinion, to Save As using different file names, so you have multiple backup copies. But I have not yet figured out a good strategy for doing that with files that are part of a book, except possibly for using a version control system such as Git.

[stokerg]

Hi @Hugo Ahrensand Welcome to the Forums,

If you can attach your .afbook file I can see if the Developers can recover but it would likely be quicker to start from scratch and create a New Book in the book panel, as it can take some time before a developer can look at the file.  

[Hugo Ahrens]

Yes, and thanks for the offer stokerg. Though I spent several days massaging the content and learning the interface and functionality of Publisher, the book is basically an import (placement) of the Word file. Having worked with Design for more than a year with no hiccups has lured me into a situation where the Publisher crash came as a real shock.

[MikeTO]

2 hours ago, Hugo Ahrens said:

Yes, and thanks for the offer stokerg. Though I spent several days massaging the content and learning the interface and functionality of Publisher, the book is basically an import (placement) of the Word file. Having worked with Design for more than a year with no hiccups has lured me into a situation where the Publisher crash came as a real shock.

If it's just the afbook file that is corrupted then you have lost very little other than the book name and a few settings such as Stray Pages. Just create a new Book and add the same chapter files to it.