Publisher 2.6 beta does not work with long texts. It hangs.

[anto]

I copied 402 pages (293 801 words) of plain A4 text (just text!)  from Libreoffice and created the first frame in Publisher and it hungs.

 

I did the same with Indesign. I created the first frame, inserted the text and then extended it to the pages and it took up to 5 seconds.

So the conclusion is that it's impossible to do any serious and extensive work in Publisher. And that's just the text!!!

[Hangman]

Hi @anto,

I just ran a quick test copying 487,764 words from an A4 Libre Office document, pasting into a text frame on Page 1, and selecting the Text Overload icon to generate 553 Publisher pages. It took around 5 seconds, so I don't think the issue is Publisher, as in, it's clearly possible to do even on a PC with minimal specs.

Does Publisher hang if you try it a second time?

[anto]

10 minutes ago, Hangman said:

Does Publisher hang if you try it a second time?

Yes

  

10 minutes ago, Hangman said:

it's clearly possible to do even on a PC with minimal specs.

No. i5-7500 with 32 Gb of memory. Indesign flying.

In Indesign this process took 23 seconds to insert text on the first page and 7 seconds to fill in the entire document.

[Hangman]

7 minutes ago, anto said:

In Indesign this process took 23 seconds to insert text on the first page and 7 seconds to fill in the entire document.

• On Windows AMD Ryzen 5 2500U with 8 GB of memory, it takes 3 seconds to insert the text on the first page and 9 seconds to create the entire document.
• On an M3 Mac with 36 GB of memory, it takes 3 seconds to insert the text on the first page and 3 seconds to create the entire document.

It's difficult to know why it's hanging on your PC... Do you have any apps open other than Libre Office and Publisher when running the Copy/Paste?

[carl123]

Also check hardware acceleration, that can do weird things when set on

[anto]

13 minutes ago, Hangman said:

Do you have any apps open other than Libre Office and Publisher when running the Copy/Paste?

I turned it all off.

 

 

[Hangman]

6 minutes ago, anto said:

I turned it all off.

Does it make any difference if you save the Libre Office document as a .docx file and then place it in Publisher or does Publisher still hang?

[anto]

I've just been researching a text document. It has a table of contents at the end of 26 pages. It's all hyperlinks. When I deleted them, the text was inserted into Publisher.
So, does Publisher freeze when inserting hyperlinks?

[anto]

When I copy pages with hyperlinks individually, one, two, ten at a time, they are pasted into Publisher. When I copy all 26, Publisher freezes.

[Hangman]

1 minute ago, anto said:

So, does Publisher freeze when inserting hyperlinks?

In theory no... I've seen issues with Data Merge and Endnote Hyperlinks in the past but not specifically with ToC hyperlinks...

Is the Libre Office Doc shareable so we can test to see if we experience the same hang and if so to track down what specifically is causing Publisher to hang?

[Hangman]

Just now, anto said:

When I copy pages with hyperlinks individually, one, two, ten at a time, they are pasted into Publisher. When I copy all 26, Publisher freezes.

Do all 26 paste if pasted individually?

[anto]

3 minutes ago, Hangman said:

Do all 26 paste if pasted individually?

Well, I don't check that much. It's too much.

 

5 minutes ago, Hangman said:

Is the Libre Office Doc shareable so we can test

This is part of Bible. I split it into two files because I guessed that something like this would happen with Publisher.

p2.doc

[Hangman]

12 minutes ago, anto said:

This is part of Bible. I split it into two files because I guessed that something like this would happen with Publisher.

Thanks for the file...

Opening the file in Word on Windows or Pages on Mac, copying and Pasting the complete document is not an issue and it does so quickly.

Opening the File in Libre Office, copying and pasting with the ToC results in the same hang that you're seeing. Copying and pasting without the ToC from Libre Office and all is good. I'm not entirely sure why the hyperlinks in the ToC should cause an issue when copying and Pasting from Libre Office but I think it's one the Dev team will need to take a look at...

[anto]

9 minutes ago, Hangman said:

Opening the file in Word on Windows or Pages on Mac, copying and Pasting the complete document is not an issue and it does so quickly.

 

When I copy the entire text from MS Word, the file is pasted into Publisher, but without a table of contents. There is only the title of the table of contents and none of the 26 pages are there.

[MikeTO]

I'm seeing the same thing as Hangman, it pastes quickly when copied from MS Word but hangs when pasting from LibreOffice.

The problem is the very last character - if I choose Select All, press Shift + Left Arrow to deselect the last paragraph break, and then choose Copy, I will be able to paste it without hanging into Publisher. I haven't peeked at the pasteboard yet to see why this might be an issue. That paragraph break can be copied and pasted on its own without an issue.

[anto]

5 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

quickly when copied from MS Word

with the last 26 pages?

[MikeTO]

Yes, those pages are copied as regular text because that's just how a TOC is imported from MS Word. It works as long as I don't copy the last paragraph break.

[MikeTO]

I don't know RTF well enough to spot the issue, but it is something to do with how LibreOffice writes to RTF compared to MS Word. The same issue will occur if you open this file in LibreOffice, export to RTF, and place the RTF file into Publisher.

And the same issue will occur if you copy from LibreOffice, extract the RTF code from the pasteboard, create an RTF file with that code, and then place the resulting RTF file into Publisher. LibreOffice is consistent in how it generates RTF code whether you're exporting or copying.

I think we've sorted this out enough now and you have a good workaround - just don't copy that last page break.

Good luck

[anto]

When I copy the entire text from MS Word, I get hieroglyphics and the last 26 pages are missing.

When I copy text from Libreoffice without a table of contents, all the letters are correct.

Then I need to put each word on a separate line. To do this, I use regular expressions. And the Publisher still freezes.

 

Text from MS Word with TOC.

 

Text from Libreoffice without TOC.

 

 

 

[anto]

And yet, Publisher does not work with long texts and many pages. I pasted the text without formatting. Publisher still hung.

 

 

[MikeTO]

39 minutes ago, anto said:

When I copy the entire text from MS Word, I get hieroglyphics and the last 26 pages are missing.

You cannot copy a TOC from MS Word to Publisher - this isn't new in the beta and will happen even with simple documents.

MS Word correctly copies the TOC to the pasteboard but does it in a way that Publisher cannot handle so it skips it entirely. LibreOffice's RTF code for a TOC is simpler and Publisher can handle it. This is something that has been previously requested.

23 minutes ago, anto said:

And yet, Publisher does not work with long texts and many pages. I pasted the text without formatting. Publisher still hung.

The number of pages and amount of text are irrelevant and Publisher can handle much longer documents than this. The problem is the TOC at the end of the document. A TOC at the start of the document will not cause an issue. Publisher will hang when copying an entire document from Libre Office that includes a TOC at the end.

I believe that Publisher still parses the same RTF code even if you choose Paste Without Formatting.

For Serif: Here is a simple test document created with MS Word that demonstrates the issue. You can copy/paste this document's text from MS Word to Publisher but copy/pasting from LibreOffice will hang Publisher.

test.docx

Here is the same document saved as RTF from LibreOffice and MS Word. You can place the MS Word version into Publisher but placing the LibreOffice RTF file will hang Publisher.

test - libre office.rtf

test - ms word.rtf

Edited December 31, 2024 by MikeTO
Clarified (text in red)

[anto]

7 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

The number of pages and amount of text are irrelevant and Publisher can handle much longer documents than this. The problem is the TOC at the end of the document

My latest videos show the opposite. With libreoffice, I didn't copy the TOC or the last character at all.

And the fact that it can work with much larger texts is still a nice fairy tale and theory. I don't see it happening. And in many cases, when there are many complex pages, it dies. And this is just a simple text.

[anto]

And Indesign inserts all the text from Libreoffice, including the TOC, without any problems

[MikeTO]

15 minutes ago, anto said:

My latest videos show the opposite. With libreoffice, I didn't copy the TOC or the last character at all.

And the fact that it can work with much larger texts is still a nice fairy tale and theory. I don't see it happening. And in many cases, when there are many complex pages, it dies. And this is just a simple text.

I can only duplicate the issue with a TOC at the end and only if I copy the trailing paragraph break.

I took your document, removed the TOC, and was able to copy and paste it without any issues.

I took the first 500 pages of your document and pasted it three times to create a 2000-page document. I was able to copy and paste that very large document without any issues.

[Affinity Info Bot]

An issue raised in this thread ("Placing rtf file from LibreOffice will Hang Publisher") has now been reported to the developers by the testing team (Ref: AF-5407). Thank you very much for reporting this issue to us.