Publisher – crash when deleting a page with page reflow disabled

[Maxdanger]

Pretty much self-explanatory from the screen record.

1. I start with a non-facing pages document.
2. I disable reflow pages.
3. I bring the second page up to form a spread with the first page.
4. I use the delete key on my keyboard to delete the third page.
5. Publisher repeatedly crashes.

Interestingly, when I use the delete button in the pages panel, Publisher doesn't crash.

Crash reports:
Affinity Publisher 2 Affinity Store-2025-07-06-133422.ipsAffinity Publisher 2 Affinity Store-2025-07-06-133132.ipsAffinity Publisher 2 Affinity Store-2025-07-06-133403.ipsAffinity Publisher 2 Affinity Store-2025-07-06-133308.ipsAffinity Publisher 2 Affinity Store-2025-07-06-133149.ips

[MikeTO]

I'm unable to delete a page by pressing the Delete key so I can't duplicate this issue.

Are you using the Delete key on a normal keyboard (which is really Backspace) or the Forward Delete key on an extended keyboard? I don't have an extended keyboard handy for testing.

[Maxdanger]

Hi @MikeTO

Yes I'm just using the standard keyboard on my Macbook and I'm pressing the backspace button. This is the keyboard mapping:

[MikeTO]

That's odd. Even if I revert my keyboard shortcuts to Serif defaults I can't duplicate this. I also tried enabling Metal in case it was one of those Metal-related issues.

Pressing Delete should not delete the page selected in the Pages panel (and so it shouldn't crash), it should delete the object selected in the document. Could you try drawing a shape on page 3 and then selecting page 3 in the panel and pressing Delete?

For Serif, there is something odd which is probably related to this crash:

1. Create a document with 5 pages - it doesn't matter if it's facing or not but I'm using facing pages for this example
2. Select page 4, 5, or 4-5 which are in the last spread
3. Press the Delete key - there isn't a selected object so nothing should happen, and indeed nothing is logged in the History panel, but the blue selection rectangle shifts to page 3 which shouldn't happen

[Maxdanger]

If this isn't supposed to be an allowable command/function, I suppose that would explain the crash. Thanks for checking this out Mike

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, Maxdanger said:

If this isn't supposed to be an allowable command/function, I suppose that would explain the crash.

If it isn’t supposed to be an allowable command/function it should have no effect, other than perhaps to trigger an error message. It certainly shouldn’t cause a crash.

[stokerg]

Hi @Maxdanger,

I also wasn't able to replicate this.  However from speaking to our QA Team, @Sean Pwas able to replicate it and found its caused by a setting 'Prefer to keep selection after delete'.  So if you open Affinity and click on the Affinity Publisher menu in the top left corner and select Settings and on the General section untick 'Prefer to keep selection after delete' and you'll no longer get a crash when trying the same workflow.  It still won't delete the page but at least it won't crash.  I'll get this logged.

19 hours ago, MikeTO said:

For Serif, there is something odd which is probably related to this crash:

1. Create a document with 5 pages - it doesn't matter if it's facing or not but I'm using facing pages for this example
2. Select page 4, 5, or 4-5 which are in the last spread
3. Press the Delete key - there isn't a selected object so nothing should happen, and indeed nothing is logged in the History panel, but the blue selection rectangle shifts to page 3 which shouldn't happen

Thanks Mike.  I'll get this logged on its own and link it to the report i'm about to make for the crash issue @Maxdangeris getting.

[Maxdanger]

That makes sense – I do have the 'prefer to keep selection after delete' option enabled.

Thanks everyone 😁