How do I import (or place) rich text into Affinity Publisher (v2)?

[Filip H]

I'm trying to make the following work flow happen in Affinity Publisher (V2):

• Put together a large body of (simply formatted) text outside Affinity Publisher programmatically. Think possibly hundreds of pages. Ideally, this would be HTML or something else that I can build myself, and that contains basic styling information such as headings (h1, h2), bold/italics (strong, em), and cross-references (a). But worst case, it can be something like a long DOCX file.
• Place this big file into an Affinity Publisher project, and make Designer do things such as apply styles (e.g. all h1 headings will look such and such) and use Auto Flow.
• Do all the design work from there.

Is this not possible? I've been trying but so far, no luck:

• Publisher doesn't let me import or "Place" HTML.
• When I copy paste HTML, it doesn't retain any styling information (bold / italic), let alone semantic information (h1, h2, li)
• When I create an RTF file in TextEdit (I'm on a Mac), then go to "Place" it, the file isn't selectable.
• When I do this with a DOCX file (also from TextEdit), I can select the file, but semantic information isn't there. Do I need to use MS Word, then?
• I can't see any way to do this programmatically (say, create a file in some semi-proprietary Affinity format that could be imported).

 

[walt.farrell]

If you have an RTF or DOCX file that contains formatting information, it will be available in Publisher after you Place the file into a Publisher document.

Perhaps you're not creating your files properly? Can you share a sample with us?

If you Open the file you created in Word or LibreOffice does it contain formatting?

[Old Bruce]

2 hours ago, Filip H said:

• When I create an RTF file in TextEdit (I'm on a Mac), then go to "Place" it, the file isn't selectable.

For me here on Mac OS 12.7.2 it is selectable when I use File > Place. This is when I have nothing selected or a Frame Text Text Frame selected in Publisher. Perhaps you have a picture frame selected.

 

2 hours ago, Filip H said:

• When I copy paste HTML, it doesn't retain any styling information (bold / italic), let alone semantic information (h1, h2, li)

The formatting comes in if I have a Frame Text Text Frame selected, and the text caret is active. 

[Filip H]

Thanks for the replies! Since HTML is closer to what I want than RTF/DOCX, I'm going to try and see if that can work first. I will get to Walt's suggestion about DOCX/RTF afterwards if HTML is not viable. Hope that's okay.

13 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

The formatting comes in if I have a Frame Text Text Frame selected, and the text caret is active. 

I think I do have Frame Text selected. And I still get unformatted text.

Could you please try copy-pasting the first few paragraphs of this article into Publisher? It's the kind of content I'm trying to import, and a) I know it's properly formatted with semantic tags (such as p for paragraph, h1 for main heading, blockquote for quotes, em for emphasis) and b) it has no extraneous formatting.

[walt.farrell]

5 minutes ago, Filip H said:

Since HTML is closer to what I want than RTF/DOCX, I'm going to try and see if that can work first

It won't.

 

[Old Bruce]

This is what it looks like here.

19 minutes ago, Filip H said:

Could you please try copy-pasting the first few paragraphs of this article into Publisher? It's the kind of content I'm trying to import, and a) I know it's properly formatted with semantic tags (such as p for paragraph, h1 for main heading, blockquote for quotes, em for emphasis) and b) it has no extraneous formatting.

[Filip H]

20 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

This is what it looks like here.

This is exactly what I'd like to see! I just tried again, first with Cmd-C Cmd-V, then with Drag & Drop, both into an existing Frame Text, and into an empty doc, and I still get this:

 

Is there a trick to it?

I'm on macOS Ventura 13.6.3, M1 MacBook Pro, Publisher version 2.2.1

 

[Filip H]

Ohhh! I used Firefox and it didn't work. I tried Chrome and it also didn't work. But now I tried Safari and it did work!

[Filip H]

Ok, now back to RTF/DOCX. Although the copy pasting of HTML does work when I'm using Safari, I don't think the "semantic" information survives. Everything is [No Style]. Will this be different if I use RTF/DOCX?

[Old Bruce]

22 minutes ago, Filip H said:

Ok, now back to RTF/DOCX. Although the copy pasting of HTML does work when I'm using Safari, I don't think the "semantic" information survives. Everything is [No Style]. Will this be different if I use RTF/DOCX?

DOCX will keep the styles if you use them. Unfortunately TextEdit cannot apply 'Styles' it doesn't have them, Pages from Apple can and does use them when exporting as a DOCX file. 

[Filip H]

Ok, sorry for discovering this in real time, but importing a DOCX (created in LibreOffice) worked the best, preserving the semantic text styles. So I guess I'll just process the HTML through LibreOffice, which shouldn't be a problem. Then I reconfigure text styles and bam! (Hopefully.)

Thanks for the help!