Help! Affinity Publisher 2 (Mac) won't save file

[John Morrish]

I've made a file and Affinity Publisher 2 refuses to save it. 

It either says the document was created in Affinity Publisher 1, or says the lock file has been lost, or just says the file can't be saved. I'm working on it and daren't restart the program. 

Version 2.5.7 on MacBook running Monterey 12.7.6. 

Here's the offending file. 

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

John

JUJU final programme 2.afpub

[GarryP]

I’ve just tried to open that document in Publisher 2.5.7 on Windows and first I get the message telling me that the software thinks it was created in V1, and then I get the message that the file type is not supported.

I then tried to add the pages from that file into a new document but got a similar file type not supported message.

Unless someone else has more ‘tricks up their sleeve’ you might need to wait until Serif can look at it, or go back to a backup version of the document.

Can you tell us where the document is stored and what type of storage that is?

You could try saving the document under a different name but I don’t know if that would help much.

[John Morrish]

Thanks Gary, 

It's a bit of conundrum. Yes, I get various types of error message. I've also tried saving it as a package and that doesn't work either. 

The document is stored on the MacBook hard drive. Multiple iterations of it under different names. They all appear in the Finder. But every time I try to save, Publisher gives me the error message saying the file is not saved. And the saved files don't open. 

I am not brave enough to quit the program and restart it. 

I will finish the job, make the PDF, and then bite the bullet. It's a one-off so if I lose it, so be it. 

 

[GarryP]

I can’t remember hearing about this sort of thing before when multiple copies of the same file evince the same problem, but someone else might have.

Is the folder you are saving to synchronised with some kind of cloud storage?

If so, have you tried saving the document to a folder which isn’t?

Hopefully someone else will be able to help further.

[John Morrish]

With 20 minutes to the deadline, I saved and did not get an error message.

It's the hope that kills you.

I've just restarted. Publisher 2 says it's a Publisher 1 document. Publisher 1 says it is not a supported file type. 

I have numerous unusable versions of the file on the desktop, in the cloud, on the machine HDD and on a portable HDD. 

And now I have found a misspelling in my Chinese text.

Deep joy.

I have a PDF of the thing. Can I import that and amend my text somehow? 

 

J

 

 

[GarryP]

31 minutes ago, John Morrish said:

I have a PDF of the thing. Can I import that and amend my text somehow?

You should be able to but it might take a bit of experimentation to get things imported the best way depending on how the text has been laid out and various other things.

[John Morrish]

That worked up to a point. l was able to make my text correction.

But the supposed Affinity document that it creates won't export the outside spread to PDF. So I've used part of an earlier PDF to make a final version for the printers.

All a bit puzzling.

Is there some plist or preference file or something that I should purge? I want to try and avoid this happening again. 

On another note, I've reinstalled Pubisher 2 on my Mac mini, where it steadfastly refuses to work. How do I tell the new installation that i am a paid-up owner? 

Thank you my friends. 

J

[GarryP]

14 minutes ago, John Morrish said:

But the supposed Affinity document that it creates won't export the outside spread to PDF.

I don’t know what you mean by “the outside spread”.

14 minutes ago, John Morrish said:

Is there some plist or preference file or something that I should purge? I want to try and avoid this happening again.

I wouldn’t like to go messing around with the application internals until I had confirmation that what I was doing was the right thing to do.

If by “this” you mean the original problem, a full application reinstallation might be an option but I couldn’t make that decision and I couldn’t say whether that would make a difference. (If the problem is with the files rather than the application then I wouldn’t think that a reinstallation would make much of a difference but it might be worth a try.)

15 minutes ago, John Morrish said:

How do I tell the new installation that i am a paid-up owner?

I can’t advise on installation issues (I don’t have much experience with that kind of thing), and I think that’s maybe a separate question for a different thread so the discussions don't get all mixed up with each other.

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, John Morrish said:

With 20 minutes to the deadline, I saved and did not get an error message.

It's the hope that kills you.

I've just restarted. Publisher 2 says it's a Publisher 1 document. Publisher 1 says it is not a supported file type.

{...}
Deep joy.

Do you mean you can now open the file in APub V2?

[John Morrish]

I’ve made a fresh installation of Publisher 2 on the Mac Mini and the files now open on that with no bleating about them being Publisher 1 files. 
 

So I’m very gratified about that but nonetheless puzzled about what is going on with the MacBook. My guess is planned obsolescence by Apple, as usual. It’s probably 10 years old and as had a very hard life. Still  prefer it to the new ones though. 
 

Thanks everybody. But really technical support is the manufacturer’s responsibility. It wouldn’t kill them. It’s pretty much Apple’s secret after all. The stuff is increasingly flakey but you can always get a girl in Manila or a boy in Venezuela to talk to you about it for as long as you like. 
 

[Doris1]

Well you are not alone. Got the same problem. I'm on a new mac mini. I will try to reinstall as well. I know, I sounds like a robot. but I'm not. I hope🤔

[John Morrish]

Hi Doris.

Humans unite  I for one do not welcome our robot overlords.

I prematurely claimed it was fixed. It wasn’t. I can still only use the file created by importing the PDF. The others I made are useless and I am nervous of using Affinity at all for now. And I have recommended it to so many people. 
 

That a pdf is editable is astonishing to me. I was there when it was supposed to be fixed, like a piece of paper. 
 

I miss paper. 

🤣

And I miss Affinity when it was a little company, same as I miss Scrivener and Sibelius. And Apple when it was a nice little cult.
 

Bigger = Worse. 

[Doris1]

It's sad