Avoiding duplicate styles when using the Assets panel

[JAJH]

I have an afpub doc that uses styles throughout. I also have a few elements saved in my Assets panel to be used as I build the document. The elements in the Assets panel are also styled.

As an example, the document includes a Message group style under which there is a Message body style and a Message heading style (all paragraph styles). The relevant element in the Assets panel (essentially a 'template' into which I paste 'message' content) is also styled using those styles.

The problem is that when I drag and drop my Message element from the Assets panel into my document, it creates (and applies!) a duplicate group of message styles named Message 1. I am left having to delete that extra style group and then reapply the document message styles to the content that I dragged in.

Surely this is not optimal? Am I doing something 'wrong' or, put another way, is there a work flow that I can use to avoid the issue?

Hope that makes sense!

Thanks.

J

[walt.farrell]

First, are you sure that the Message Text Style saved in your Asset is defined exactly the same as the Message Text Style you currently have in your document? One reason for creating a similar Text Style name like that would be if there are any differences at all between settings in the two definitions, no matter how small. 

[JAJH]

Hi Walt

Thanks for the response. That could be the issue.

I created the 'assets' by dragging them from the document, complete with document styles. At that point, the styles would have been identical. But I have 'tweaked' the document style since then which could mean that the document style and asset style now differ. But that seems a clumsy result if, every time I alter a document style, I have to go into the assets panel and 'adjust' all the assets to coincide with the update. I would have thought that, if an asset is formatted with a style and I change the style, the asset would change also?

[walt.farrell]

21 hours ago, JAJH said:

I would have thought that, if an asset is formatted with a style and I change the style, the asset would change also?

There is no connection between Assets (in the Assets panel) and anything in the current document. Nor does the application know whether the Asset was created from some specific document. And you could use a Text Style named XYZ in several different documents, and it might have a different definition in each of them.

Users have requested, in the context of importing .docx and .rtf files, that Affinity have an option to simply trust the Text Style names that come in, and adjust the text to match any same-named Text Styles the current document already uses rather than creating the new Text Styles. But that hasn't been done, so far. If it is, perhaps it could apply to Text Styles within Assets, too. That might make a nice Feature Request (in the Feedback forum) to go along with those older requests. (Or maybe that request already exists, too, and I just haven't seen it.)

[JAJH]

Of course there is no connection between the Assets and document otherwise you wouldn't be able to use the Assets in document after document. Obvious now that you point it out so why didn't I think of that 🫢. Thanks Walt for helping out someone who shoulda/coulda helped himself. I will head over to see about making a feature request.

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome.