Master page Affinity Publisher

[pioneer]

Good afternoon.  I have created a document with two master pages. Some of the pages within the Document rely on master B (A blank table with a few inserted texts).  When I alter the width of one of the columns within the table on master B, this sadly is not reflected on the pages that currently rely on Master B.  is there a function somewhere to update the master on the page to reflect the changes to master B please? If not how can I overcome this?  Cheers John

[MikeTO]

Hi John, I don't think there's a way to do this. Once you've added text to a table on a document page, changes to the table rows and widths on the master will no longer be reflected in the table on that page.

[pioneer]

Ok @MikeTO Looks like I will have to find some sort of workaround☹️.  Thanks very much for getting back.

[thomaso]

8 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Once you've added text to a table on a document page, changes to the table rows and widths on the master will no longer be reflected in the table on that page.

To me this behaviour for master tables appears to be a bug.

Note, that you may only change cell content and text style but neither column or row size without detaching the object first. Actually all object properties in the Table panel are grayed-out when a master table or cell is selected on a document's page. This locked object properties would rather indicate that they do not lose the connection to their parent master object.

Compare text frames that got edited content on a document page still react on changes of columns, frame size, frame style or position done to their initial master page object – while also the options in the Text Frame panel are grayed-out for master text frames on a document's page.

[MikeTO]

I think it has to work differently than text frames due to complexity. With a text frame, deleting a column or changing the size just reflows the contents. With a table, deleting a master table's row that has data on a document page would require merging that row's cells with the row above. Ugh.

When you type a character in a table, the table is automatically detached without warning from the master in terms of columns and rows. It's not fully detached - moving and scaling the table on the master page will still update the document page - but the table structure is detached. If you re-apply the master, the table will be migrated out of the master layer. This isn't explained in Help but I'll write about this when I get to that chapter. While I haven't fully explored it yet, I don't see why entering a single character into a master page table should detach the table in terms of row and column size changes.

Tables work a bit differently in ID where tables can't exist outside of text frames. The end result is the same though. If you put a table in a master text frame you're just entering placeholder "text". Editing the frame on a document page will detach the frame's contents from the placeholder "text" and future changes to the master table should be ignored.

 

 

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, MikeTO said:

With a text frame, deleting a column or changing the size just reflows the contents. With a table, deleting a master table's row that has data on a document page would require merging that row's cells with the row above. Ugh.

Apart from "deleting" a column of a text frame or a table: "just reflow" in a text frame could also be judged as harmful, for instance because it can cause text overflow and thus "disappearing" text in text frames. – Accordingly I would expect for tables a change of column width done on a master page would be transferred to the table instance on the documents page.

1 hour ago, MikeTO said:

If you re-apply the master, the table will be migrated out of the master layer.

To me in V1 it's even worse because it results in an additional table layer on the affected document page.