Publisher: Adding pages causes master items to duplicate

[mattspace]

I don't know quite how to express this, I have master pages with Picture Frame boxes on them, in which I place images once they're used on a page.

If I add extra pages, and the document reflows, the Picture Frame boxes from the master seem to get applied a second time, and I end up with all these extra empty "Picture Frame" layers that I can't delete in the Layers palette, and which will physically block me clicking on the ones that actually have content within them on the canvas, because they're further forward in the layer stack. It's almost as if Publisher isn't tracking the existing Picture Frames as being the Master items.

How are you supposed to move pages about in a document without the Masters being re-applied and ending up with orphan layers?

[mattspace]

FWIW I think I have something of a solution to this, which is to change the Master Items Page Move Options from Move Master Content to Split Masters. I don't really understand why this works, or what the significance of the language used to describe these options is, because the behaviour observed seemed to match what I would expect from the Reapply Masters option.

Nevertheless, with it set to Split Masters, adding a single page in to a spread moves the pages around correctly, and makes things from the left and right of the Master spread flip sides on the client spreads, as I would expect when adding one page to a spread page document.

I can't help but think the default behaviour of the application is trying to be too clever, abstracting too much away from replicating the physical nature of a page layout. When I add one page to a spread layout, I expect things on the left to end up on the right, because that's how the physical things would behave. It makes me wonder if the people designing this app ever used to work with hot wax and bromide cameras, or if they're designing software, having only ever used software.

[JonsJ]

This is exactly the problem I'm having that's the reason I'm visiting the forum today. Thanks to the search feature, I found your post.

Can you help, though? I can't find the Page Move Options from Move Master Content to Split Masters features that you're referencing. Can you describe where I can dance those options?

Thanks

[MikeTO]

46 minutes ago, JonsJ said:

This is exactly the problem I'm having that's the reason I'm visiting the forum today. Thanks to the search feature, I found your post.

Can you help, though? I can't find the Page Move Options from Move Master Content to Split Masters features that you're referencing. Can you describe where I can dance those options?

Click the panel options menu (the three lines in the upper right corner of the Pages panel) to open the options menu.

[JonsJ]

Quick and easy. That solved the issue I was having. THANKS!

For the record, I found NO mention of "Page Move Options" in the Affinity Publisher Help feature.

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, JonsJ said:

Quick and easy. That solved the issue I was having. THANKS!

For the record, I found NO mention of "Page Move Options" in the Affinity Publisher Help feature.

Here's the help page: https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Pages/migrateMasterPages.html&title=Migrating edited master page content

You'll also find similar information my free Publisher manual which is available as a PDF from this forum: