Affinity Publisher V2 Gets Very Slow

[itsdisnei]

Hello!

I use Affinity Publisher 2 to create digital planners, but when working with larger files, the software becomes extremely slow. Duplicating pages and master pages can take minutes to process.

The total file size is only 35MB for 1,600 pages, so I’m wondering if this is expected behavior or if my system might be the issue.

Here are my PC specs:

• Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (8-Core, 16 Threads, 3.6 GHz)
• RAM: 32GB
• Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060
• OS: Windows 10 Pro (Version 19045)

I'm attaching a screen recording to show how long it takes. Would upgrading any components help improve performance?

Additionally, I'm considering buying an M4 MacBook Air, but I’m unsure if it would handle this kind of workload well. Any insights would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

[MikeTO]

I haven't seen any speed issues like this on my M4 Pro, or even on my previous M1 Pro. I tried creating a 1600-page document but didn't experience any issues.

You have plenty of memory so it seems surprising that it's not working. However, perhaps it's something with the image resources so I can't say for sure that it would work better on an M4.

If you'd like me to test it, feel free to send me the file as long as it's not too huge.

Good luck

[itsdisnei]

Hi @MikeTO thanks for your reply, and appreciate you offering to test it. File is attached. Duplicating a master page for the first time works fine for me, but when I duplicate the newly created master page (the one that resulted from the previous duplication), it becomes very slow. Typing also gets very laggy.

Again, thank you so much!

Teacher Planner 25-26 - V2.afpub

[MikeTO]

I tested it and it's somewhat faster on my M4 Pro but is still incredibly slow.

After opening the document, which does take a bit, It took a long time to generate the 1667 thumbnails for the Pages panel. Duplicating pages while it was generating thumbnails was very slow but if I wanted until it was done with that then duplicating the last page of the document took 8.5 seconds. That's still too long.

This is a very complex document. There are many master pages and each has many layers, and many of those layers have effects. I think there may be a simpler way to construct the document, although I can't be sure that will make much of a difference in performance.

All of your masters are independent, none are based on another, and many of them have the exact same layers. Instead of duplicating all those masters and layers, you should consider creating masters for the various page layouts and then applying them to the various monthly and weekly masters. Publisher allows applying masters to masters. I don't know if this will improve performance, but it will mean you'll have only one set of all those tabs and rules. This will make maintenance much easier because if you change the main master for a layout then all of the months based on that master wil update automatically.

One specific example: you have masters named Jul Daily, Jul Daily 2... Jul Daily 5, one for each week of July. Each of those has many layers but the only difference is which week is highlighted in the monthly calendar and which tab is selected. I would create a Daily master and apply it to the July Daily master. The only specific objects on July Daily would be the word July, the July calendar, etc. Then I'd apply the July Daily master to the 5 weekly July Daily masters and just add the selected tab and week. You'd actually have more masters doing it this way, but it would be simpler to maintain.

If this approach makes no difference then I can only suggest breaking this up into one document per month or quarter.

Good luck!

 

[itsdisnei]

Hi Mike, thank you so much for taking the time to test it. I really appreciate that. I'll try to group the masters next time and see if it performs better!