Mysterious duplication of text across pages

[PRDesCon]

I created a 24 page magazine document. The text of one article is text flowed across three pages (successfully). I then exported a low resolution PDF for editorial proofreading. The three text panels were perfectly intact in the PDF. I then created a high res version to go to the print house using a pre-formatted profile which I've been using without issue for a couple of years (successfully). The print house came back to me with an error - each of the three text panels (one on each of 3 pages) had the same opening text (ie the first page of the flowed text).

So, basically as the screenshots show, each of the three text boxes displays the same text instead to the flowed article. I cannot find any reason for this, particularly as the low res versions were okay. I also repeated the PDF export from the same master Publisher file without repeating the problem.

Mac OS. Affinity 2.

Page 1

Page 2

 Page 3

[Hangman]

Hi @PRDesCon and welcome ot the forums,

We'd really need to see your Publisher document to understand what may be going on, is it possible you can upload it so we can take a look?

[Pšenda]

13 hours ago, PRDesCon said:

each of the three text boxes displays the same text instead to the flowed article

Did you insert the text directly into the Text Frame on the Master Page, where the same text will appear on all pages that use this Master Page? Or did you insert it all the way into the Page?

[thomaso]

14 hours ago, PRDesCon said:

I cannot find any reason for this, particularly as the low res versions were okay. I also repeated the PDF export from the same master Publisher file without repeating the problem.

I wonder if there are different versions of this APub document, with an earlier one accidentally used to export the PDF for the printer.

If the .afpub document was saved using "Save As..." with different file names, the "Title" field in APub and also in the PDF reflects the difference.

[PRDesCon]

Hangman, Psenda and `Thomas,

Note: The screenshots in my original post were of the exported PDF.

Thanks for your responses, Attached here are the pages of the AFPUB file.

The text was inserted directly into the page's text box and then flowed into the following two pages. I didn't use the Master pages.

There were two versions of the Publisher document. The first was the working master, where the text was preserved as text - there were no problems in exporting this to PDF. The second version (attached) had the text converted ready for print. This version displayed the text correctly before being exported to PDF. Only the PDF displayed the text in a repeating format - NOT the AFPUB version.

2025-04AprilCM82-V1.1red-CONVERTED.afpub

[Hangman]

Hi @PRDesCon,

Many thanks for the file and the additional information...

It's going to be a little tricky to diagnose since the text on the three affected pages has been converted to outlines (as you mention) in the attached document which means the text frames are no longer linked or flowing...

Is there any particular reason why you converted the text to outlines and can you upload the working Master before the text was converted, even a stripped-back version?

Exporting the file you've uploaded exports correctly for me, i.e., the text isn't duplicated on the three pages in question when exporting as All Pages or as All Spreads...

[PRDesCon]

This, I think is why it is so mysterious. The problem only occurred after the text had been converted to outlines (my print house requires this). So, as the text is now a 'graphic image' in effect, there's no reason for it to misbehave (as far as I can see).

When I export the unconverted, raw text version to PDF there is not a problem.

2025-04AprilCM82-V1.0RedLINKED.afpub

[Hangman]

Hi @PRDesCon,

At the moment it is a complete mystry as both files export as you'd expect them do, without any duplicated text and there is nothing in the structure of the either file that points to any obvious cause...

With your second file, I've converted the text to curves via the PDF Export window and directly on page and again no issues...

Do you happen to have the actual PDF containing the duplicate text as that may (or may not) point towards something...

[thomaso]

14 hours ago, PRDesCon said:

There were two versions of the Publisher document. (…) The second version had the text converted ready for print.

13 hours ago, PRDesCon said:

The problem only occurred after the text had been converted to outlines (my print house requires this).

BTW, to provide text as curves in a PDF to the printer you don't need to create/save an additional .afpub document but can use the export option "Embed fonts: Text as Curves".

 

[PRDesCon]

These are the 3 pages from the bad PDF,

2025-04AprilCM82-V1.0CONVERTED pages 13 - 15.pdf

[Hangman]

Hi @PRDesCon,

Okay, I figured out the problem...

With the non-converted file, select the text frame on page 13 and convert it to Curves Layer → Convert to Curves, repeat for page 14 and then page 15 and note the text is repeated on all three text frames...

As @thomaso mentioned, it makes far more sense to convert the text to curves as part of the export process, this then allows you to maintain the original editable text in your source document without the need to run two versions of the file...

This is the expected behaviour if converting the text in this way because you are converting the first frame to curves so all the text in that frame is converted, and the frame is no longer part of that story, so it all gets pushed along to the 2 remaining frames, and so on...

[thomaso]

4 hours ago, Hangman said:

With the non-converted file, select the text frame on page 13 and convert it to Curves Layer → Convert to Curves, repeat for page 14 and then page 15 and note the text is repeated on all three text frames...

(…)

As for why it's doing that, I'm unsure but I would assume it's a bug but I'll run some more tests to determine...

I agree, it feels quite buggy (– apart from the more comfortable conversion via export). The issue seems to be related to the missing feature to cut or copy one individual text frame from a text flow as a separate object without getting all text copied and the story beginning at the resulting frame.

Workaround: Convert the flowing story backwards, convert its last frame first.

Or, for V2 only: What if you select all text frames of the document + choose "convert to curves"? Does it convert the entire story? – At least it works in V1 with multiple linked and selected text frames (on the same page).

[Hangman]

3 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I agree, it feels quite buggy (– apart from the more comfortable conversion via export). The issue seems to be related to the missing feature to cut or copy one individual text frame from a text flow as a separate object without getting all text copied and the story beginning at the resulting frame.

I edited my reply after thinking about it further and the behaviour does make sense for the reason cited...

4 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Or, for V2 only: What if you select all text frames of the document + choose "convert to curves"? Does it convert the entire story? – At least it works in V1 with multiple linked and selected text frames (on the same page).

It does work, which is why I missed the problem initially because that's exactly what I did which then of course didn't encounter the issue...

[PRDesCon]

BRILLIANT, just brilliant...

Well, there's a thing! Brilliant sleuthing guys - thank you so very much. I can see exactly how this has happened now. In the past I have deliberately taken the route of outlining  each page individually to avoid the possibility of any small text frame being missed. HOWEVER... the mantle is now lifted from eyes and I'll use Tomaso's advice and incorporate it into the export process which makes sense on a number of levels.

Have a good weekend.