Affinity Publisher: Copying footnotes in Word

[Pyanepsion]

v.2.4.0.2256

Hello everyone.

There is currently a gap in the process of copying text from Affinity Publisher into Word. Footnotes are not automatically transferred, forcing users to manually take them from Affinity Publisher and insert them one by one into Word.

This can be a time-consuming, tedious and error-prone task. For example, it took me around 2 hours for 110 notes, or roughly 1 to 2 minutes per footnote. Automating it will be a great help to anyone who has to resend a Word version in addition to the PDF to those who have (obviously) reworked it in Affinity Publisher.

[Petar Petrenko]

It's quite obvious having in mind that Affinity doesn't have Word export filter. If they plan to do it maybe it would be better to make RTF export filter rather than Word's one.

[Pyanepsion]

This has nothing to do with an export filter. All that's involved here is copying and pasting the text from Affinity Publisher into Word. Notes are not included.

Anyone who works with notes will often have to provide the text in Word format at some point, and since this copy-and-paste doesn't work, it's a huge waste of time and a huge risk of errors.

[Old Bruce]

8 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

Anyone who works with notes will often have to provide the text in Word format at some point, and since this copy-and-paste doesn't work, it's a huge waste of time and a huge risk of errors.

While I don't disagree with your desire to improve Publisher's ability I do question the workflow of adding notes to the Publisher document instead of a Word document. I prefer to work with finished text, not a work still in progress. Once the author has finished their work is when I'll start the layout.

[Pyanepsion]

Hi, @Old Bruce,

Absolutely. According to recommended standards, we usually start the process by working initially in a Word document before moving on to the layout in Affinity Publisher, but…

In day-to-day practice, however, it is still common to receive requests from customers for last-minute changes, such as adding or deleting text and notes from the final document that has already been laid out. In such situations, it would be inefficient to start the layout process all over again. Our usual approach is therefore to make the necessary adjustments to the work already done. Once the layout has been completed, it is then common for the client to request an updated Word version, which presents significant challenges. Going through each annotation and modification one by one can be not only tedious and time-consuming, but also error-prone.

[Affinityconfusesme]

Exporting DOCX files would help this situation as there would be no need to copy them.

[Petar Petrenko]

1 hour ago, tzvi20 said:

Exporting DOCX files would help this situation as there would be no need to copy them.

Let's say Publisher has DOCX export filter and you exported the file to send it back to the customer to make additional changes. After that you will have to restart from zero with it because the export is not 1:1 with features.

What you really need is Publisher's new feature same as WordsFlow.

[Affinityconfusesme]

It would be for what I need it for.(essays in college)

[PaoloT]

3 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Let's say Publisher has DOCX export filter and you exported the file to send it back to the customer to make additional changes. After that you will have to restart from zero with it because the export is not 1:1 with features.

Proofreading has to happen with Revision/Change Tracking mode turned on, or manual highlighting of changes in the Word document. Then, changes will have to be manually transferred to the page layout document.

There is no other reliable way to do proofreading.

Paolo

 

[PaoloT]

On 2/7/2024 at 8:53 AM, Petar Petrenko said:

maybe it would be better to make RTF export filter rather than Word's one

I've the impression that the DOCX format had replaced the RTF one(s). I'm not totally sure, but it should be an open format. It's more modern. Recovering plain text from it should be easier.

Paolo

 

[Affinityconfusesme]

https://docs.fileformat.com/word-processing/docx/

it was after competitors reversed engineered it.

[Pyanepsion]

6 hours ago, PaoloT said:

Proofreading has to happen with Revision/Change Tracking mode turned on, or manual highlighting of changes in the Word document.

Good theoretical practice is often far removed from our day-to-day reality. Clients often request changes during or after the layout has been finalized, often during proofing. In the example I gave in the introduction, I had to adjust a 90 notes to a 110 notes project  following deletions and moves requested after proofing. In such situations, it would be unfair to charge again for the entire layout. The main problem is the copy and paste process from Affinity Publisher, which doesn’t handle copying notes properly.

[Petar Petrenko]

6 hours ago, PaoloT said:

I've the impression that the DOCX format had replaced the RTF one(s). I'm not totally sure, but it should be an open format. It's more modern. Recovering plain test from it should be easier.

Paolo

 

You can't trust Microsoft too much. Tommorow they can change something in DOCX code and... a new headache for the third party developers of DOCX export/import filters. RTF is IMO much more reliable. ODT/ODF is another good format that is worth to be a member of a Publisher import filters.

[PaoloT]

3 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

Good theoretical practice is often far removed from our day-to-day reality. Clients often request changes during or after the layout has been finalized, often during proofing.

I was not clear in my reply. What I mean is that correction to a text already put in page are usually done on a document that has to be carefully annotated. It may be a PDF with highlights, or a Word document (exported from the page layout one) with automatic Change Tracking turned on.

The alternative is someone giving you a Word document with editing, where you have to find yourself the changes. You can do it with a comparison tools, but in any case it is a hell of a work. When this happen, I'm alway tempted to import the Word document again, and redo all the layout work, if it is not too complicate.

Paolo

 

[Petar Petrenko]

1 hour ago, PaoloT said:

The alternative is someone giving you a Word document with editing, where you have to find yourself the changes.

Editing and correcting the text is the author's responsibility, or the person hired by the author to do that, not the person who does the layout.

[Pyanepsion]

3 hours ago, PaoloT said:

What I mean is […]

Let me clarify my comment. What you say is the theory. In practice, however, the client often requests changes to the main text and sometimes to the notes after the receipt of the final press proofproofing. Once the proof has been approved, they often ask for a new version of the Word file. Transferring text from Affinity Publisher to Word takes just a few seconds thanks to the copy-paste function. Transferring notes, on the other hand, is quite different, as Affinity Publisher is unable to copy them. That's why I've come up with this suggestion.

[PaoloT]

2 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Editing and correcting the text is the author's responsibility

And the person that does the page layout has to insert the changes. Who else could do it?

Paolo

 

[Oufti]

3 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

Once the proof has been approved, they often ask for a new version of the Word file.

In this case, I send them a PDF instead (*) and I instruct them to use Acrobat Reader to mark the changes they want. Its lateral panel helps me not to forget any correction. 

Here is the kind of links I will give my client to understand how to use this feature:

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/mark-text-edits.html#mark_up_text_with_edits

https://cmosshoptalk.com/2022/05/10/pdf-proofreading-markup/

 

(*) Whatever, I don't want to re-import their Word file and redo all the subsequent layout and correction…

 

[Catshill]

47 minutes ago, Oufti said:

In this case, I send them a PDF instead (*) and I instruct them to use Acrobat Reader to mark the changes they want. Its lateral panel helps me not to forget any correction. 

Here is the kind of links I will give my client to understand how to use this feature:

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/mark-text-edits.html#mark_up_text_with_edits

https://cmosshoptalk.com/2022/05/10/pdf-proofreading-markup/

 

(*) Whatever, I don't want to re-import their Word file and redo all the subsequent layout and correction…

 

I do exactly the same and with the pdf uploaded to the cloud, comments can be added by multiple people.

[Oufti]

On 2/8/2024 at 10:45 PM, Catshill said:

I do exactly the same

I'll add that when comes the time to type the corrections in the laid out document, I begin with the last correction first — so, because the text above will not flow, I will always visually find easily the next item to correct. 
(If I began with the first item, next lines would be changed and a word which was on the left of the column in the annotated PDF could be moved on the right in Publisher for example, making harder to find it.)

[Pyanepsion]

11 hours ago, Oufti said:

In this case, I send them a PDF instead (*) and I instruct them to use Acrobat Reader to mark the changes they want. Its lateral panel helps me not to forget any correction. 

It seems there may be an issue in our discussions related to the translation of technical terms.

I am primarily addressing the final phase of the project here. Initially, the client approved the revised document in Microsoft Word. The layout was then done using Affinity Publisher, and a proof was produced in PDF format. After reviewing the printed result, the client often requests additional modifications. These are made directly by Affinity Publisher. A new proof is then produced and approved.

At this stage, the client typically requests a new version of the document in Word format. This is where the difficulties arise, as Affinity Publisher is unable to transfer the annotations. This lengthy and error-prone task consequently requires manual re-entry of each note from Affinity Publisher to be integrated one by one into Word.

[PaoloT]

1 hour ago, Pyanepsion said:

At this stage, the client typically requests a new version of the document in Word format

More than a problem with copying, it looks like a straight matter of a missing Word export command.

While I understand (but can't forgive…) the omission of an IDML export at this stage, Word is such a common file format that it looks one of the most urgent things to add. Not only to extract text, but also to generate eBooks.

Paolo

 

[Petar Petrenko]

Neither the author nor Affinity Publisher is to blame. It's our own fault because in 99% of cases authors don't know the entire process of creating books, magazines, etc. They think they know absolutely everything, even which program is best for creating them. They even insist that it should be InDesign because they heard somewhere that it is the "best" for the job.

That's why, when we conclude a deal with a client, we need to let him know what we expect from him:

• complete text that has undergone proofreading;
• images (if any) should be in JPG or TIF format with 300 dpi and the same size in which they will be placed on the page;
• color images should be in the RGB color space;
• the images must not be inside the Word document, but only captions that will tell us where to place them.

And what he have to expect from us:

• get the final material in PDF only;
• no source code, no fonts, no images, etc.;
• any further proofreading after the start of work is charged additionally and is done in PDF, not in Word or any other text processor.

After this, it should be clearer to the author that he is in charge only of the text and that he should leave it to us to finish our part of the work properly.
If nothing else, this should keep potential problems to a minimum.

[Pyanepsion]

@Petar Petrenko, I think, or at least I hope, that's how we all do it!