Affinity publisher extremely slow

[FayeO]

Hi, since 2 days publisher has been excruciatingly slow. Every action I do, even if as simple as correcting a word takes 12 seconds (I counted). I can’t work like this. There’s more than enough space on my iMac.

Any suggestions?

[R C-R]

Has anything been updated or added to your Mac in the last two days?

[FayeO]

42 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Has anything been updated or added to your Mac in the last two days?

I don’t think so, no.

[MikeTO]

Have you restarted your computer? I ask only because probably once a year, my Mac seems to get its memory so messed up that apps like Affinity do grind to a halt and I have to restart.

Does this happen with any document or just with this specific document?

If it's just this specific document, are there other parts of the document in which you can edit text without issues?

I know of two issues that can make Publisher painfully slow. One involves having lots of inline images. The workaround is to break up the story so that it's not as long - dividing it in half would have a huge benefit if this is your issue.

The other issue is rather rare but involves fitting notes, in my case, side notes. This one is even worse, typing speed is less than one character per second even on Apple Silicon, it's like watching paint dry. Fortunately, I've only encountered this issue once.

Good luck!

[FayeO]

7 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Have you restarted your computer? I ask only because probably once a year, my Mac seems to get its memory so messed up that apps like Affinity do grind to a halt and I have to restart.

Does this happen with any document or just with this specific document?

If it's just this specific document, are there other parts of the document in which you can edit text without issues?

I know of two issues that can make Publisher painfully slow. One involves having lots of inline images. The workaround is to break up the story so that it's not as long - dividing it in half would have a huge benefit if this is your issue.

The other issue is rather rare but involves fitting notes, in my case, side notes. This one is even worse, typing speed is less than one character per second even on Apple Silicon, it's like watching paint dry. Fortunately, I've only encountered this issue once.

Good luck!

I’ve restarted my computer many times.

It’s one specific document. I’m formatting a book with a few illustrations.  It’s very sad and frustrating I have to split it for affinity to work properly again.
With a book that’s not easy at all, because the other pages automatically move one or a few pages when the layout earlier in the document makes it necessary  

[walt.farrell]

6 hours ago, FayeO said:

With a book that’s not easy at all, because the other pages automatically move one or a few pages when the layout earlier in the document makes it necessary

Is that what's causing your problem? If the edits you're making require large amounts of text reflowing, e.g. to flow around images, that could explain it being slow.

[MikeTO]

I recommend splitting books up into separate stories for each chapter. That works logically and if you add more text the story will overflow the last frame and you can use Autoflow or manually add pages. If you delete text, you will have to delete pages manually to avoid blank pages. But I find this approach works rather well and avoids performance issues. I do have one book where it's not enough and I have to split up one chapter into two stories to avoid performance issues.

Which iMac model do you have?

[FayeO]

On 12/25/2024 at 3:46 PM, MikeTO said:

I recommend splitting books up into separate stories for each chapter. That works logically and if you add more text the story will overflow the last frame and you can use Autoflow or manually add pages. If you delete text, you will have to delete pages manually to avoid blank pages. But I find this approach works rather well and avoids performance issues. I do have one book where it's not enough and I have to split up one chapter into two stories to avoid performance issues.

Which iMac model do you have?

I have a 2020 iMac.

 

On 12/25/2024 at 1:38 PM, walt.farrell said:

Is that what's causing your problem? If the edits you're making require large amounts of text reflowing, e.g. to flow around images, that could explain it being slow.

No, the images are in the master pages. Only the text needs to reflow depending on the text formatting of the previous chapter.

[MikeTO]

@FayeO You do have a recent model and while a current processor would likely be 2-4 times faster depending on which processor you chose for your iMac, that's not going to be enough to make the 12-second lag you're experiencing shrink enough to feel normal.

If you're able to share the document here I'd be happy to take a look and offer suggestions. If you're unable to share it here publicly, you may need to wait for Serif to respond because they will sometimes offer a private upload link. But in the meantime, the best advice I can offer is to split up the long story into multiple small stories.

Good luck