Assigning Master Pages consistently crashes publisher 2.5.7

[Blenderik]

I converted an indesign book containing 20 chapters by exporting to idml and importing in publisher. Most of it worked well, but:
I had to change the master pages, bc. I wanted chapter headings and they are not being recognized as dynamic, which I understand.
So I chose a source chapter and changed the master page there. Synching the changes to another chapter duplicated Master B-Regular Page. When I tried to delete the previous B-Regular Page, publisher crashes, when I try to assign the new B page to any page in the chapter, publisher crashes.

Also, related: Some pages are messed up, their text frame is too large, but I can't change the size (apparently inherited by the master page? but it's only on some pages), so even dragging the master page onto one of these crashes publisher every time.

[Hangman]

Hi @Blenderik,

Can you zip up the IDML files and upload them along with the Publisher file you are having issues with so we can take a look?

[MikeTO]

Beyond the crash issue, note that syncing master pages between chapters is very limited in Publisher. You will end up with two versions of the master page and the old version will still be applied to the pages. You must apply the new master page to all the pages which may or may not have an impact on them. And then delete the master page as you're trying to do.

An alternative approach is to merge all the Chapter documents together (using Document > Add Pages from File), make the changes to the master page (and text styles and anything else) in the combined file, and the split them back up if you want to use the Books feature. It's a bit of an extra step but will make it much easier.

Also, just because you needed to use the Books feature in InDesign doesn't mean you need to use it in Publisher. You may find after merging your Chapters that it works perfectly well as a single file. (The key is to keep each chapter's text as a separate story which would already be the case if you merged your Chapter documents.) This would avoid all the syncing issues and a few bugs and limitations with the Books feature.

Good luck

[Blenderik]

18 hours ago, Hangman said:

Hi @Blenderik,

Can you zip up the IDML files and upload them along with the Publisher file you are having issues with so we can take a look?

I just tried with 2 single page chapters, the issue does not occur, neither in the newly created test book nor my original. I need permission of my co-author to send you more.
Chapters with more pages still crash. I noticed this fairly late, it might have to do with synching properties and whatnot.

 

[Blenderik]

@MikeTO

>>> An alternative approach is to merge all the Chapter documents together (using Document > Add Pages from File), make the changes to the master page (and text styles and anything else) in the combined file, and the split them back up if you want to use the Books feature. It's a bit of an extra step but will make it much easier.

Thanks, that might work.

I cannot merge the book, it's > 400 pages and a lot of images. I'm afraid that would impact performance. And even if it didn't, working with several people on a single file is not possible. Not to mention scrolling from chapter to chapter.

We might need to do that in the end, since the bullets and numbering between the chapters keep changing.

[Hangman]

10 minutes ago, Blenderik said:

I just tried with 2 single page chapters, the issue does not occur, neither in the newly created test book nor my original. I need permission of my co-author to send you more.

No problem, just let us know how things progress and how your co-author feels. If there is no obvious resolution to the problem at your end, we'd be happy to take a look at the files for you...

[MikeTO]

4 hours ago, Blenderik said:

I cannot merge the book, it's > 400 pages and a lot of images. I'm afraid that would impact performance. And even if it didn't, working with several people on a single file is not possible. Not to mention scrolling from chapter to chapter.

I have a longer book with several hundred high resolution images and there is no performance issue. What slows down Publisher, an in fact any page layout app, is the length of a story because then as you type it has to reflow the entire story. If you break a long document up into one story per 'chapter' then it only has to reflow that story. Publisher does have one performance bottleneck though - it's the number of pinned images in a story. If you have hundreds of images pinned in a story, reflow will be slower. Again, the solution is more separate stories.

Unfortunately, the Books feature of Publisher is not designed for collaboration but for use by a single person on a single computer. The path to a chapter is stored in the book as absolute and not relative, so the book cannot be easily moved. (You can back up a book, but if you need to open a backup, ensure there are not chapters at the original paths because those will be opened instead of the backup with different paths.) If somebody else opens a chapter file, whether on the same network or because you send it to them via email, things could get messed up. Features such as global list and page numbering, indexing, footnotes/endnotes/sidenotes, sections, and cross-references are all designed to work with the files being available. So you could email chapter 17 to somebody while you're working on chapter 15. But as you edit 15, Publisher is quietly updating chapter 17 in the background. When you receive the edited chapter 17 back, you would overwrite the changes Publisher had already made to it. Publisher might recover well from the situation, syncing everything again, but there have been enough glitches with the Books feature reported here that I wouldn't take that chance myself.

Scrolling from chapter to chapter: This is a real issue, the Pages panel isn't ideal for a 500-page document. The performance is great, it scrolls instantly, but trying to find chapter 17 in a 42 chapter document requires doing quick math in your head and then scrolling about that far down to look for it. Fortunately for me, my chapter title pages are very obvious so I scroll quickly, slow down, and look for the chapter title. I keep hoping that the Section Manager and Pages panel will be merged together someday so that I could quickly jump to the start of a section. Or at least add a "Go" button to the existing Section Manager for those who are willing to keep it open on screen. For now, the best way to navigate a long document is with Find and Replace. Press Cmd/Ctrl+F, type the chapter heading or some other keyword unique to the start of the chapter, and press Return to jump there.

4 hours ago, Blenderik said:

We might need to do that in the end, since the bullets and numbering between the chapters keep changing.

I'm unsure what you mean by the bullets changing, but do you mean page number or list numbering? Publisher can sync both across a Book. For the latter, you need to use a global list (aka running list).

Good luck

[Oufti]

6 hours ago, MikeTO said:

For now, the best way to navigate a long document is with Find and Replace. Press Cmd/Ctrl+F, type the chapter heading or some other keyword unique to the start of the chapter, and press Return to jump there.

To navigate easily in certain documents, I cobbled this: 

On the Master page, I place outside of the page a temporary text frame (with solid background so it's well visible) and I insert a general TOC inside, so I can use the hyperlinks with a right-click on any line of the TOC

[Old Bruce]

On 1/9/2025 at 5:29 AM, MikeTO said:

For now, the best way to navigate a long document is with Find and Replace. Press Cmd/Ctrl+F, type the chapter heading or some other keyword unique to the start of the chapter, and press Return to jump there.

I use the Find with the Paragaph style for the Chapter headings. I also added a pair of keyboard shortcuts for Find Next, and Find Previous.