Editing Chapters of a Book

[RainbowsC]

Hi fellow Affinity users.
I am hoping for some words of wisdom about editing book chapters.
I created three separate parts of a book and then I assembled them into a book in Affinity Publisher, I noted that as well as the Save option on the main menu, there is a Save Book option on the hamburger menu on the tab menu that contains the Books tab. I assumed the Main Menu Save option must save the chapter being worked on.

I have edited the parts of the book by selecting the relevant part in the Books chapter list to open that part, making changes, then saving via the Main Menu Save option and also via the Save Book option. 

It does not appear to me that the changes are being correctly saved. Initially, it appeared they were, but when I reopened the file a day later, it was all messed up. Part 1 was showing an overflowing text error and had lost the last two pages. I fixed that, saved carefully, then went on to check Part II. When I opened the file again a day later, the missing pages from Part 1 were missing again and the overflow error was back.

I also noted other errors that had been fixed had reappeared.

I am also struggling with text flow. In some parts of the document, the links are skipping over pages and linking to a page further on. That appears to be causing omissions of paragraphs and some sentences repeated in the wrong place! 

Am I doing this wrong?  Should I only edit the chapters independently, outside of the book, and then either remove the old versions from the book and add the revised files in, or delete the book and create it again?

I used to edit chapters in Adobe InDesign the way I edited these and it always worked fine. It's very frustrating that I can't trust the system to retain the changes I make!  It almost feels like there is a gremlin in there determined to ensure I can never complete this work and prepare it for publication!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. 

[MikeTO]

Hi, I don't think the issues are related to the use of the Books feature. You wrote that the text flow links are skipping over pages. Check the page before the skip, the skipped pages, and the page after the skip. Are some of the frames on master pages and some of the frames on the actual document pages? You can tell which is which by the size handles. They will be round handles for frames on the actual page and X-handles for frames on the master page.

Sometimes users re-apply the master page, either directly or when adding a single page, and a frame gets migrated (promoted) to the document page layer. Then if they use AutoFlow to generate more text frames, they AutoFlow from that document page frame which creates frames that overlap the master page's frames.

If you're able to share one of the chapter documents here we could take a look and give you some advice.

Good luck.

[RainbowsC]

Aha! Thank you. Putting this reply and your response to my other question (about misaligned text frames) together, it's obvious that somehow I've ended up with some frames on the actual document pages. Is there a simple way to fix this without disrupting all the text?

Happy to share a chapter document, but I'll check again first and see if I can at least highlight which pages are wrong so you don't waste too much time looking for the problem.

Thanks again for your generous help, MikeTO.

[MikeTO]

4 hours ago, RainbowsC said:

Aha! Thank you. Putting this reply and your response to my other question (about misaligned text frames) together, it's obvious that somehow I've ended up with some frames on the actual document pages. Is there a simple way to fix this without disrupting all the text?

The easiest way is to simply delete the pages and use AutoFlow from a page with a master frame to generate more pages. The story is attached to the first frame in the series of linked frames so deleting pages later in the story won't hurt anything, unless you have unpinned images on those pages.

Cheers