Affinity Publisher V1 importing a PDF not showing in the text box

[walt.farrell]

You're right that if you Open it the text won't flow from frame to frame. You will have to handle that manually:

1. Click the lower-right linking triangle on the first page, then
2. Click in the frame on the next page, then
3. Repeat.

But that is your only choice if you insist on transferring via fixed-format PDF files.

Placing the PDF file will not help you.

 

[Return]

Placed pdf files will not honor group text in textframes hence the separate text lines.
Open the pdf in afpublisher (which will honor grouping text in textframes when choosing the option on opening)>save as afpub file>place the afpub file instead of the pdf.
Cumbersome workaround, yes and I posted this as an issue way back but it is said to be "by design".

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, jmsjms said:

Yes, the text-flow between pages is very relevant, because I will have hundreds of pages and I will be using hyphenation. Sure, I can all finish this in OpenOffice Writer, but since I have APub, why not try it here for a first time. I don't like the word-tracking tool in OO, and here I am given more control of tracking and kerning. I also wanted to test the hyphenation here, because I was having some issues with hyphenation in OO. Also, the page-numbering here is easier than in OO.

Thanks for clarifying your goal. It appears to differ from your previous note…

14 hours ago, jmsjms said:

I don't want to use Affinity Publisher as a writing/editing software. I am used to using OpenOffice Writer for that purpose. That's why I want to be careful and not end up with duplicate documents. I want to use Affinity Publisher only for my printing purposes.

… and would, imho, rather mean that you do want to edit the imported text by its style properties at least and thus want to influence hyphenation and cause a different text flow which may affect the entire document and even the required number of pages.

For this use opening a PDF is indeed limited and less helpful in Affinity. Although you have the option to open the PDF with its lines of text grouped as Frame Text layers ("T") different to Artistic Text layers ("A") you would have to link the frames manually as @walt.farrell pointed out.

So it appears to be more useful to import the text via a text file (not PDF). While I am not experienced with your text editing application and its 'hidden' style + 'comments' feature I assume you have options to handle this in APub without issues, for instance by…

• saving a text document version without your comments and comment styles before using the file in APub, or
• ignoring unintentionally imported style entries in APub Text Styles panel (you can't "hide" styles in APub's Text Styles panel but may 'Group' or delete them), or
• editing these "hidden styles" in APub to make them appear as wanted (for instance assign "No colour" or colour with 0% opacity),

… while it is still unclear to me whether you are 'just' disturbed by style entries occurring in APub's Text Styles panel – or also get your "comments" imported? (not their styles only)

If your "comments" get imported unintentionally (i.e. not their styles only) and have their styles assigned in APub you possibly may assign a certain fill colour for the comments and then use a Select menu option to select all items with that fill colour to hide these layers in the Layers Panel or even delete them from APub if wanted. Alternatively you could use the Find & Replace panel to search for all instances of this comment text style across the entire document and edit their text content independently from the desired story text, for instance by replacing all comments with a space character. – The 'best' workflow to get rid of these 'comments' in APub depends on how the comments appear, for instance whether they are written within the story text or get imported as separate text frames (objects, layers).

[jmsjms]

Yes, I was laying out a book in Apub, but not editing it. The only editing in Apub was going to be, the hyphenation, orphan, and widow control; also page numbering, using a lot of Shift+Enter to nudge pronouns that are not supposed to be at the end of a page, and even possibly changing the font and the point size.

My comments in OO are not in frames. They are in separate paragraphs right before my writings. At the end I hide my comments by opening my style for the comments and check-marking a button that says Hidden. When I export to PDF my comments remain hidden. When I open the PDF in Chrome or Adobe reader, they remain hidden. When I open the PDF in Apub, they remain hidden, however the text is not editable as I described, and I will probably not go to the extra length of making it editable. When I open .rtf in Apub the text was editable, but the hidden comments were visible. So, initially I expected to find the same hide button in the style that OO has, but since Apub doesn't have that feature, it's not gonna work to start manually deleting the text. OO format (.odt) is not supported in Apub, so I am giving up.

I see you pointed how I can do a workaround, but I don't want to go the extra length. I already got discouraged.