Publisher - change embedded document to linked - weird

[Jpburns]

When you’ve embedded a (let’s say…) designer document in a publisher page, and want instead for it to be a linked document, the behavior of the “make linked” menu is weird.
What I expect is for it to do is replace the selected item with a link to an external doc. What it actually does is attempt to save a copy of the embedded page. Weird.

In a related item, I updated all the linked designer docs in my file, making sure they were in the same directory as the .afpub file on the desktop version of Publisher, but when I open the .afpub file on my iPad,  it says “missing Resources.” If I say “yes” to the dialog box, it won’t relink any of the files, despite navigating to the file on my network (they’re residing on my MacBook Pro in the next room). If I replace the file, it becomes embedded. Wah!

I’ve got 26 pages (so far) with a linked designer doc on each page, and I can’t seem to figure out a way to fix them all in a simple way.

Really annoying to attempt to use these files on 2 different systems (iOS and MacOS). 
 

[walt.farrell]

10 minutes ago, Jpburns said:

What I expect is for it to do is replace the selected item with a link to an external doc. What it actually does is attempt to save a copy of the embedded page. Weird.

What does the Resource Manager show for your embedded document? Did it have the file name and the path you expect? Does that path exist on your machine?

[Jpburns]

37 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

What does the Resource Manager show for your embedded document? Did it have the file name and the path you expect? Does that path exist on your machine?

Like I said, it’s a network-accessible file. The .afpub and linked files exist on my Mac. I’m attempting to edit it on my iPad. 

[NathanC]

Hi @Jpburns,

Thanks for raising,

18 hours ago, Jpburns said:

I updated all the linked designer docs in my file, making sure they were in the same directory as the .afpub file on the desktop version of Publisher, but when I open the .afpub file on my iPad,  it says “missing Resources.”

I'm still testing this one, as my iPad connection to the SMB shared folder i've got setup on another Mac is terrible so I can't reliably tell what's going on as it's taking a long time to update the resource when I make any changes to it from any connected devices. I'll confirm if i'm able to replicate.

18 hours ago, Jpburns said:

If I say “yes” to the dialog box, it won’t relink any of the files, despite navigating to the file on my network

I'm definitely seeing this, selecting the relevant folder and file does nothing and the resource status just stays as 'missing', this was the same with having the resource kept locally or on an SMB share, I've now logged this.

While testing this I did observe that in the file explorer dialog there was no 'Open' option at the top right hand corner, whereas if you long press on the resource and then select 'Re-link' and then 'Open' on the relevant folder the re-link is then successful.

18 hours ago, Jpburns said:

If I replace the file, it becomes embedded. Wah!

It doesn't appear to be respecting the placement policy of that specific resource when you opt to replace it and just defaults it to embedded if the resource is missing. However on desktop it will respect the placement policy for the replaced resource so if it was linked previously the replaced resource will also be linked, I've also now logged this. I had checked that my document policy was also set to 'prefer linked' but it doesn't appear to factor that in either.

[Jpburns]

Thanks for confirming some of this. I hope this gets fixed. I’m a comics creator, and I like doing a lot of my work on my iPad, as I’m struggling with some health concerns, and don’t want to sit at a desk for hours. A more bulletproof linking scheme would be very helpful. 
 

Thanks again. 

[Jpburns]

4 hours ago, NathanC said:

 

While testing this I did observe that in the file explorer dialog there was no 'Open' option at the top right hand corner, whereas if you long press on the resource and then select 'Re-link' and then 'Open' on the relevant folder the re-link is then successful.

 

It’s not relinking for me. Nothing happens. No error, no nothing.

Errr…. (Deleted unnecessary video)

edit:

oh, now I see. The open button appears using that relink option. Not very intuitive. You should make it so if you select one missing resource, it looks in that directory for the others. 

 

Edited January 29 by Jpburns
Suddenly noticed “open” button.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Jpburns said:

oh, now I see. The open button appears using that relink option. Not very intuitive. You should make it so if you select one missing resource, it looks in that directory for the others. 

If you're on the Desktop, that's what you get if there's a missing item and you reply Yes when prompted to locate it. If you're in the Resource Manager, and use Relink, you're locating the directory, and Open selects the directory.

I'm not quite sure what you're looking at right now. If you're on the iPad, I'm away from mine and can't confirm what you should see.

[Jpburns]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

you

 

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

If you're on the Desktop, that's what you get if there's a missing item and you reply Yes when prompted to locate it. If you're in the Resource Manager, and use Relink, you're locating the directory, and Open selects the directory.

I'm not quite sure what you're looking at right now. If you're on the iPad, I'm away from mine and can't confirm what you should see.

I haven’t tested it on the Mac, but on the iPad, when you get the missing resource dialog, the “yes” response takes you to a file browser that’s missing the “open” button. You can select a file, but nothing happens.

Then if you use the resource manager to relink an individual resource, the “open” button (which should say “relink to this directory”) appears, and clicking it relink all linked resources.
Kludgy. 

[NathanC]

23 hours ago, NathanC said:

I'm still testing this one, as my iPad connection to the SMB shared folder i've got setup on another Mac is terrible so I can't reliably tell what's going on as it's taking a long time to update the resource when I make any changes to it from any connected devices. I'll confirm if i'm able to replicate.

Just as a follow up on this, I found that if I opened the .afpub file created on iPad which contained the linked resources on my Mac I would then be prompted to update the location of the resources as they are missing, but this was as expected as the file path of the resources changes in between MacOS and IOS despite it being the same SMB share, for IOS this was /private/var/mobile/library/livefiles etc. and for MacOS it was /Volumes/SMB Share/ etc, this was outside of the app's control.

The iPad Files app on the SMB share appears to have issues updating any existing files I've made edits to, even outside of Affinity. For example If I edit a basic .rtf text file on desktop and then save it back to the same location on the SMB share, other MacOS devices connected to that share can almost immediately access the updated version of the document, however the iPad version on Files remains unmodified, and I can only get the .rtf file to update by ejecting and re-connecting the share, this is the same for resources i've edited in the Affinity apps. Doing this ejection and re-connection causes issues for linked resources in Publisher as the re-connected Share then has a different file smbclient path, which then causes the resources to become unlinked.

I can see i'm not the only one to run into this limitation: https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/anyone-know-how-to-force-the-files-app-to-refresh-its-view/21564

In comparison, using a cloud service like OneDrive did not present this problem editing and saving a resource on Mac updated/synced it on iPad in a relatively short duration, and I just had to simply update the resource in Publisher.

[Jpburns]

On 1/31/2024 at 3:24 AM, NathanC said:

Just as a follow up on this, I found that if I opened the .afpub file created on iPad which contained the linked resources on my Mac I would then be prompted to update the location of the resources as they are missing, but this was as expected as the file path of the resources changes in between MacOS and IOS despite it being the same SMB share, for IOS this was /private/var/mobile/library/livefiles etc. and for MacOS it was /Volumes/SMB Share/ etc, this was outside of the app's control.

…

What might make this more functional would be to be the ability to save multiple paths in your settings.
That way, if the program couldn’t find it at /Volumes/Users/myName/Documents (or whatever), it could fall back to whatever the SMB path would be (at least the prefix). Kind of like a remapping on fail for missing resources.  In my setup, unless I moved the files, it would be either one or the other. 
i know cloud services are an option, but I’d just like to use files on a local network volume (this is just my house, after all). I’m sure folks in an office environment would also appreciate this sort of option. 

While I’m wishing… I’d also like more reliable updating of a file “open”ed from a remote volume (rather than imported in to the live files). I feel like there have been times when I make changes on my Mac, but the changes aren’t reflected in the “live” files.