Invalid anchor (preflight) question

[MikeTO]

This isn't a bug but a question about a 2.6.0 enhancement. Are there any other reasons we might see the new "Invalid anchor" Preflight warning other than for an unnamed anchor? I stumbled across this while converting another book to 2.6.0 and it had an unnamed anchor.

Upon opening the book I saw 8 "Unnamed Anchor" warnings in Preflight. It took a while to figure out but I must have created a paragraph with only a pinned group (image and text frame) in it and accidentally formatted it as a heading which included the pinned group in the TOC. I must have corrected that by changing it to Body but updating the TOC did not remove the previously generated anchor. I would have caught this eventually when I exported to PDF and looked at the bookmarks but 2.6.0 nicely warned me of this invalid anchor.

2.6.0 actually gave me 8 warnings for the same unnamed anchor. I tried to duplicate the excess warnings in a simple test doc (attached) but this just gave me the single warning. I'm not too fussed about this but please let me know if you want my book to review the excess warnings.

Should updating the TOC remove previously generated anchors that are no longer required because they're not in headings and not the target of a cross-reference? I think that would be ideal but it might not be worth the effort. If you accidentally formatted a body paragraph as a heading you'd be unlikely to update the TOC before fixing it, so this is only an issue for images that are alone in heading paragraphs.

test.afpub

[EmT]

On 1/24/2025 at 3:38 PM, MikeTO said:

please let me know if you want my book to review the excess warnings.

Could you please attach this, I can send a provide upload link if needed. 

[MikeTO]

29 minutes ago, EmT said:

Could you please attach this, I can send a provide upload link if needed. 

I'll send it to you, thanks.

I was trying to reduce the document just now to make it easier to test with and I found a potential clue. When I open the document and update the TOC I get 8 unnamed anchor warnings for page 27. When I delete all the following pages so the story overflows the frame on page 27, the number of unnamed anchor warnings drops to 4. Curious because if they're really on page 27 they should still be there. I then auto flowed the story again and it went up to 7. Note that there are other stories in the document so auto flowing only restored this one story.

[Affinity Info Bot]

An issue raised in this thread ("Unnamed Anchor shows 8 times in a document for a single unnamed anchor ") has now been reported to the developers by the testing team (Ref: AF-5722). Thank you very much for reporting this issue to us.

[MaxineD]

Another unnamed anchor query - what do I do to fix unnamed anchors - since I can't make sense of any earlier replies....

My table of contents won't update - it's completely out of whack. Then I looked at pre-flight and saw 100s of 'unnamed anchor' on p147. I'd had an issue with trying to move pages around, which totally messed up the 'flow'. But I thought I'd got it all fixed. The flow now looks right. I can't see any issues with p147 tho the preflight says it's full of unnamed anchors. Screenshots attached.

Help would be appreciated

Thanks

[MikeTO]

Option 1:

1. Select Text > Interactive > Show Anchors
2. In Preflight, double-click the first preflight warning for the unnamed anchor - this will select the frame containing the unnamed anchor
3. Find the unnamed anchor in the frame and using the Frame Text tool, position the text cursor beside it and delete it, either using Delete or Backspace as required
4. Check Preflight - multiple warnings should be deleted by deleting the single anchor. If there are other anchors on page 147, repeat as required. I had 8 warnings for one anchor but I don't know if that number is meaningful for your document.

Option 2:

1. Open the Anchors panel
2. Scroll down until you find an unnamed anchor - delete it or give it a name
3. Repeat until you address all the unnamed anchors

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "Unnamed Anchor shows 8 times in a document for a single unnamed anchor" (REF: AF-5722) has been fixed by the developers in the latest beta build (2.6.2.3213). The fix is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Affinity Info Bot to notify us.