I can't unlock layers in Affinity Publisher

[Budd]

So, I need to unlock a layer on a Master Page, but it won't unlock. What's the deal?

Thanks

[R C-R]

There is no way to know what you need to do without more info about exactly how & where you are trying to unlock the layer. If nothing else, a screenshot showing the Layers & Pages panel with the layer selected will help.

[Budd]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

There is no way to know what you need to do without more info about exactly how & where you are trying to unlock the layer. If nothing else, a screenshot showing the Layers & Pages panel with the layer selected will help.

  

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

There is no way to know what you need to do without more info about exactly how & where you are trying to unlock the layer. If nothing else, a screenshot showing the Layers & Pages panel with the layer selected will help.

OK, here's a shot of part of the layers panel. It shows some locked layers. Normally you would think that clicking on the lock icon would unlock the layer. It does not. Attempting to unlock through the menu, or by right clicking the layer also does not work. I'm stumped. In this case, just to get it done, I deleted the layer and made a new one, but I did not lock it. Oh, and its not just the one layer, I can't unlock any layer. [scratches head]

[Pšenda]

Unlock it in Master Page, not in Page. 

[R C-R]

45 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Unlock it in Master Page, not in Page. 

On my Mac, it does not matter if in a page a child layer of a Master Page object is locked or unlocked. The lock can still be toggled on & off, although of course it has no effect if the object is a child of a Master page.

So I think it would help if we could see the Pages panel (like I requested above) to see if the screenshot is from a master or document page, plus enough of the Layers panel to see if it these locked objects are really children of a Master page or not.

[Budd]

15 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Unlock it in Master Page, not in Page. 

Yes it is on the Master page, and that is where I am attempting to toggle the lock off. When I do that the lock icon grays while the button is depressed, and then comes back when the button is released.

[Pšenda]

6 minutes ago, Budd said:

Yes it is on the Master page

Did you double-click on the master A thumbnail in Master pages? A blue border does not necessarily mean that the master page is selected for editing and is displayed in the Layers panel. It would be better/more unambiguous to show the contents of the entire Layers Panel, not just a part of it like in your first screenshot.

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, Budd said:

Yes it is on the Master page, and that is where I am attempting to toggle the lock off. When I do that the lock icon grays while the button is depressed, and then comes back when the button is released.

The blue outline in the Pages panel just means it is selected (for use with the Duplicate & Delete selected buttons), not that it is the current page shown in the Layers window.

If you show us a screenshot of the entire Layers panel, or at least enough that we can see what are children of Master A, then it will probably show that you are on a document page, not the Master A page.

Anyway, just try double-clicking on Master A in the Pages panel. You should get a grey border, indicating it is the current page, so that in the Layers panel you can see what it includes.

[lepr]

For a regular page containing a master page, the following situation appears to exist:

• If a master object's lock has been enabled in linked editing mode, then it wrongly cannot be toggled in detached editing mode.
• If a master object's lock has been enabled in detached editing mode, then it correctly cannot be toggled in linked editing mode.
• A master object's lock is wrongly directly available for detached editing in regular page editing mode, but see the first condition.

 

[Budd]

4 hours ago, R C-R said:

The blue outline in the Pages panel just means it is selected (for use with the Duplicate & Delete selected buttons), not that it is the current page shown in the Layers window.

If you show us a screenshot of the entire Layers panel, or at least enough that we can see what are children of Master A, then it will probably show that you are on a document page, not the Master A page.

Anyway, just try double-clicking on Master A in the Pages panel. You should get a grey border, indicating it is the current page, so that in the Layers panel you can see what it includes.

OK, the blue outline in the master page screenshot is a result of double clicking. It is also blue on a single click, but that does not make it the selected page, double clicking does.

The layer panel screenshot is complete, with all groups open.

[Budd]

2 hours ago, lepr said:

For a regular page containing a master page, the following situation appears to exist:

• If a master object's lock has been enabled in linked editing mode, then it wrongly cannot be toggled in detached editing mode.
• If a master object's lock has been enabled in detached editing mode, then it correctly cannot be toggled in linked editing mode.
• A master object's lock is wrongly directly available for detached editing in regular page editing mode, but see the first condition.

 

Sorry, I am not familiar with detached and linked editing modes, and neither linked, or detached is checked. Edit frame content is checked. I assume this is the default because I have never changed these.

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, Budd said:

OK, the blue outline in the master page screenshot is a result of double clicking.

That is very weird. For me double-clicking on a page in the Pages panel (whether a master or document page) always turns its border grey, disables (greys out) the Duplicate Selected & Delete Selected buttons, & removes the blue out line around the Master Page title.

[R C-R]

4 minutes ago, Budd said:

Sorry, I am not familiar with detached and linked editing modes, and neither linked, or detached is checked. Edit frame content is checked. I assume this is the default because I have never changed these.

See https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/pages/Pages/detachLinkMasterPages.html 

Note that this is for "publication" (document) pages.

[R C-R]

19 hours ago, Budd said:

OK, the blue outline in the master page screenshot is a result of double clicking. It is also blue on a single click, but that does not make it the selected page, double clicking does.

I am still not convinced what you have done makes that Master page the active one (which is different from selecting it in the Pages panel.) 

So to confirm that it is the active one, please look at the bottom right LEFT of the status bar where you should see a group of page navigation buttons & a text string displaying either the Master page name or 'X of Y' where X is the current document page & Y is the total number of pages in the document.

If is showing the Master A page name that master is active; otherwise a document page is.

Edited January 11 by R C-R
Thanks for the correction Walt!

[Budd]

16 hours ago, R C-R said:

I am still not convinced what you have done makes that Master page the active one (which is different from selecting it in the Pages panel.) 

So to confirm that it is the active one, please look at the bottom right LEFT of the status bar where you should see a group of page navigation buttons & a text string displaying either the Master page name or 'X of Y' where X is the current document page & Y is the total number of pages in the document.

If is showing the Master A page name that master is active; otherwise a document page is.

Yep, its the active page. You can also tell by the fact that it is in the big edit window (not shown here). When you select (single click) on a page the edit window will still show the active page (the one you were working on). In order to make another page active, and appear in the edit window, you must double click. I have a lot to learn, but I do know some things, this is one of them. I really appreciate the responses, but I think we can move past the idea that I'm working on the wrong page.

[lepr]

@Budd We're at the stage where an example document featuring the problem needs to be provided for us to examine.

[walt.farrell]

19 hours ago, lepr said:

We're at the stage where an example document featuring the problem needs to be provided for us to examine

A screenshot of the complete application window would also be nice.

[Budd]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

A screenshot of the complete application window would also be nice.

Actually, I think we're at the stage where I stop going around this bush. I solved my problem by creating a new layer, and deleting the problem locked layer. While it's also true that I could not unlock other locked layers, I didn't need to. So, I thank you all for responding to my query, and I'm moving on.