Why is there no cancel button on the section manager??

[Ryan Clarke]

I have only just noticed that the geniuses that built Publisher chose not to add a 'cancel' button to the section manager. So not only does the section manager not show me the page I am currently on, if I accidentally start changing the page numbers on an existing section, it changes all sections, then there is no way of undoing it!!

Unbelievable.

Also, why doesn't the section manager have its own pane? It is so laborious having to repeatedly get to it by clicking on the bookmark icon, opening and closing it.

[MikeTO]

Only modal dialog boxes have cancel buttons and the Section Manager isn't modal, you can leave it open while you work.

You can undo changes made in the Section Manager or any other non-modal dialog or panel by choosing Undo.

You can open the Section Manager by choosing Window > Section Manager. If you do this all the time, you might consider adding a shortcut for it.

The Section Manager opens automatically to the selected page but once it's open it doesn't change to reflect changes to the displayed page. I believe this is by design.

[Ryan Clarke]

But I can't even change the end page on a specific section, only the start page. This means that if one of my sections changes, due to an added page, I have to do those sections onwards all over again.

It won't even let me select a range of pages, then create a section to have that range automatically entered. It just insists on adding the final page of the document as the end page.

And if I forget to enter a section then I have to delete all those that come after it and start again!!

So basically, sections can only be added when you have finally locked all pages and will not add or move anything. Great. Very helpful for checking the overall look of my finished document.

I often wonder if the developers have ever actually used this software in a practical application.

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, Ryan Clarke said:

But I can't even change the end page on a specific section, only the start page. This means that if one of my sections changes, due to an added page, I have to do those sections onwards all over again.

You should start a new story at the start of each section. Then if you add or remove content from section 1, the start page of section 2 will always be correct. Using sections with one long story for the entire document will be frustrating.

1 hour ago, Ryan Clarke said:

And if I forget to enter a section then I have to delete all those that come after it and start again!!

So basically, sections can only be added when you have finally locked all pages and will not add or move anything.

That is not correct. You can create a new section and change its starting page number without impacting the existing sections.

I use sections in my books and I'm able to add and remove sections in the middle of a document without impacting the existing sections. The key is to break the long story into one story per section.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Ryan Clarke said:

But I can't even change the end page on a specific section, only the start page. This means that if one of my sections changes, due to an added page, I have to do those sections onwards all over again.

Of course you can change the end of a section. But the way you have to do it is by changing where the next section starts.

For example, if I decide that section 2 should end a page later, I do that by making section 3 start a page later.

 

 

 

[Ryan Clarke]

I appreciate that, but I don't understand why the section manager insists that every single page has to have a section. I have blank pages between some sections and there is no need to add them to the section.

Another error I have noticed is that the section manager will only allow me to start on an even page. It doesn't matter if I click on the right hand panel of a spread and then create a new section, it will ALWAYS automatically enter the left hand page number. This means that I have to manually increment the page number by one in the box every time. Why won't it take the section number from the page I have selected?

Also, if I enter the section name, and then click start page from number 1 it erases what I have just entered into the section name!

[MikeTO]

53 minutes ago, Ryan Clarke said:

I appreciate that, but I don't understand why the section manager insists that every single page has to have a section. I have blank pages between some sections and there is no need to add them to the section.

Every page of every document is in a section. If you don't use the Section Manager, all of your pages will be in section 1. This is not unusual, most apps work this way. Even Microsoft Word does this - its sections don't have names but they have numbers and if you create a new document and insert a section number field, you'll find you are in section #1.

55 minutes ago, Ryan Clarke said:

Another error I have noticed is that the section manager will only allow me to start on an even page. It doesn't matter if I click on the right hand panel of a spread and then create a new section, it will ALWAYS automatically enter the left hand page number. This means that I have to manually increment the page number by one in the box every time. Why won't it take the section number from the page I have selected?

I agree this should be better. The Section Manager uses the active page number and in a facing-page document, the only active page is the first one in the spread as shown in the status bar at the bottom of the screen. In other apps, you can change the active page even within a facing page spread but that's not a concept Publisher has. It will be interesting to see if this changes when multi-page spreads are added.

58 minutes ago, Ryan Clarke said:

Also, if I enter the section name, and then click start page from number 1 it erases what I have just entered into the section name!

This is a known bug across Affinity. In most windows, you must press Tab or Return to accept changes made to a text field. There are a lot of posts about this and a few bug reports have been logged.