Affinity Publisher Using 100% RAM, Can Barely Edit Document in Any Capacity Anymore

[snackdaddygaming]

I am working on a file that, albeit, has many linked files connected to it. But, this is untenable. I have a brand new set up with plenty of ram and more than enough graphical capability. It is the only program o my computer giving me this issue and I'd really like to be able to edit faster than 1 key stroke every 5 seconds.

Computer Info

Processor    12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700KF, 3600 Mhz, 12 Core(s), 20 Logical Processor(s)
Installed Physical Memory (RAM)    32.0 GB
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060

Ive attached the file and if there is anything else I should add please let me know. Thanks everyone

Campaign Setting Guide 2025.afpub

Campaign Setting Guide 2025.afpub

[MikeTO]

Hi and welcome to the forums.

You do have a powerful computer so typing shouldn't be that slow. I find it sluggish on my M4 Pro Mac but it's just a tad sluggish and not as bad as you're reporting. This makes it difficult to narrow down the cause.

I'm fairly certain it has something to do with your master page setup. I removed most of the master page content, leaving just the text frames. Could you test this version and let us know if typing is faster now for you? If it is, I'll try to narrow it down further.

Note that I don't have the font or linked resources so I'm not seeing the document as you're seeing it, but it's unlikely that the font or the linked resources are the source of the speed issue.

test.afpub

[snackdaddygaming]

So, of course AFTER, I finally make a post, I tried changing a setting and tis working well, for now. I changed "View Quality" to "Nearest Neighbor (Fastest) and everything seems to be running a lot smoother. If things start slowing down again, I'll try removing everything from the master pages. Currently, I have all the items on the master page Hidden from view to try and help things. 

I appreciate the timely response! Thank you!

[snackdaddygaming]

Well that worked, very briefly, so I'll go ahead and give this a shot!

[snackdaddygaming]

Unfortunately the test file still made everything shoot up too 100%. Could it be something with linked files? 

[NotMyFault]

2 hours ago, snackdaddygaming said:

tried changing a setting and tis working well, for now. I changed "View Quality" to "Nearest Neighbor (Fastest) and everything seems to be running a lot smoother.

This is random correlation but has nothing to do with your issue and has severe side effects. The rendering inside the app no longer matches export (view mode pixel).

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, MikeTO said:

I removed most of the master page content...

Weird! When I opened the OP's document the master page has no content except for the text frames -- nothing else. Plus, on any of the document spreads I checked everything was in that Master A. If I deleted the master on any of those spreads, nothing was left.

[MikeTO]

31 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Weird! When I opened the OP's document the master page has no content except for the text frames -- nothing else. Plus, on any of the document spreads I checked everything was in that Master A. If I deleted the master on any of those spreads, nothing was left.

It's easy to miss but at the bottom of the master there is a Layer named Page Decorators with a lot of curves. Most of them are hidden but I was suspecting they are the source of the speed issue.

3 hours ago, snackdaddygaming said:

Unfortunately the test file still made everything shoot up too 100%. Could it be something with linked files? 

The test file I shared was still bad for you? Okay, I'll take another look.

[R C-R]

8 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

It's easy to miss but at the bottom of the master there is 

I can find some small items at the bottom of the master page but nothing like the various other objects on the document pages, including the text items.

But everything on the document spread (like Pages 20,21) disappears if I clear its master, so somehow all that stuff is on the master page, like the layers panel shows for that spread.

[PaulEC]

45 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I can find some small items at the bottom of the master page but nothing like the various other objects on the document pages, including the text items.

But everything on the document spread (like Pages 20,21) disappears if I clear its master, so somehow all that stuff is on the master page, like the layers panel shows for that spread.

If you look at the Layers Panel for the Master Page there are dozens (hundreds?) of hidden layers! Why they need to be there, and applied to every page, I have no idea! It looks like the content for all/most of the pages is on the Master Page, then made visible or hidden as needed on each individual page. It seems to me a very odd way to use Master Pages!

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, PaulEC said:

If you look at the Layers Panel for the Master Page there are dozens of hidden layers!

Can you find any of the text layers that show up in Pages 20,21 hidden in the Master A page? I did not do an exhaustive search but I could not.

[PaulEC]

I'm not really sure exactly what's going on, but if you look at the Layers Panel for pages 20/21 (it's the same on the few others I've looked at) there is only the Master Page, but expanding that shows endless layers (all on the Master Page).

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

I'm not really sure exactly what's going on

Neither am I but what I was looking for is any of the page 20,21 text layers hidden(?) in the Master A page in the Pages panel. I can't find any signs of them either at the bottom of the page or anywhere else.

Regardless, the way this document is set up seems very odd & much more complicated than it needs to be.

BTW, once the document loads on my Mac, I can access the text on the document page & change it with essentially no delay. Weird!

[snackdaddygaming]

I did so those curves that I hadnt noticed before. I've tried deleting the excess and rasterizing the decorations I was using. I'll see if it improves.

This was all built off of a template that i purchaed from DriveThruRPG 2 years ago. I didn't really make the template. Just added some fonts, paint brushes, etc. This is the first time I've had this issue, as I had a version of this before 2.6.2 and never had this issue.

 

[snackdaddygaming]

I removed all of those unneeded curves and have next to nothing on the master page anymore, but I'm still getting these 100% CPU spikes

[snackdaddygaming]

After trudging through and getting the editing done, I think there is some image that is causing a problem, but have no idea which one it is. I was having issues exporting the file unless everything was rasterized.