unlinking text boxes

[MikeV]

Is there a way to unlink two linked text boxes in Publisher without deleting one of those boxes?

Thanks

M

[mac_heibu]

Yes, there is a way. Just look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHkHCw5wL6I

[MikeV]

Hi mac_heibu,

Thanks for the response. The video was really helpful but …

How do you get the link symbol next to the move tool to turn red so it unlinks? I've tried the obvious in holding down function, control, option, command, delete even escape but no go.

I'm obviously missing something.

Cheers

M

 

[mac_heibu]

Simply click into the text frame, which shouldn’t link forward its text.! No modifier keys, no dragging – simply clicking. Here an additional screencast showing some more possibilities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROE9JNb0P7Y

[MikeV]

Thanks for the follow-up. It's subtle but I've got it. Click on the link triangle to get the red unlink symbol then click within the source text box to delete the link. The opposite of making a link by clicking on the triangle and then onto the text box you want to link too. Once you know how it is a very neat and simple approach.

Thanks

Cheers

M

 

[oneearth]

When I unlink as described it deletes the text after the break. How do I just unlink the boxes and keep the text before and after the broken link?

[sfriedberg]

oneearth, I'm not sure whether you are reporting a bug or a feature.  If you unlink text frames, the text flow stops flowing into the frames after the link you remove.  It shouldn't get deleted.  If you relink the last frame to a new frame, the text will continue flowing.  So, it's by design that when you break a link, the text no longer appears in the frames that previously followed the link.  But the text isn't deleted.

Now, if you found the text is actually deleted, that's a serious bug.

And if you want the text to remain in the now-unlinked frames, that's a feature request.  Essentially, you want one body of text to flow through two unrelated sequences of frames, with the start of the text in one sequence not the same as the actual start of the text.  I don't believe Publisher can use one body of text in two sequences of frames (without duplicating the body of text).  And I don't believe Publisher can start a visible text flow at any place but the start of the body of text.  So, two new basic features plus the feature of "if I have a body of text flowing through linked frames and remove a link, make the body of text flow through both remaining sequences of frames and offset the visible start of the text in the 2nd sequence so that it looks the same as before I removed the link."

[Old Bruce]

2 hours ago, oneearth said:

When I unlink as described it deletes the text after the break. How do I just unlink the boxes and keep the text before and after the broken link?

You'll have to link again to the third text frame. One has the text linked to two which is linked to three. One now has the text, just link it to three.

[garrettm30]

On 5/2/2020 at 1:59 PM, sfriedberg said:

And if you want the text to remain in the now-unlinked frames, that's a feature request.

I would be glad for such a feature request. Something like shift-click on the little button to break the thread would divide into two separate stories with the text distributed into the two separate stories, split based on which text frame each half was before the split.

Of course, the current behavior would need to be the default behavior without a modifier.

[Lauren67]

On 9/16/2018 at 3:30 AM, MikeV said:

Thanks for the follow-up. It's subtle but I've got it. Click on the link triangle to get the red unlink symbol then click within the source text box to delete the link. The opposite of making a link by clicking on the triangle and then onto the text box you want to link too. Once you know how it is a very neat and simple approach.

Thanks

Cheers

M

 

Thanks for the awesome directions!

[GuyMiklos]

On 5/2/2020 at 2:59 PM, sfriedberg said:

the feature of "if I have a body of text flowing through linked frames and remove a link, make the body of text flow through both remaining sequences of frames and offset the visible start of the text in the 2nd sequence so that it looks the same as before I removed the link."

I might have use for this feature, I think, though I'm not sure.

This is my problem. I have my whole book text as one story (frame chain). I would like to split it into one story per chapter. The reason for wanting this is that I want my list of literature references to come at the end of each chapter, NOT at the end of the book. If each chapter were a story I could use "Text>Notes>InsertEndNotes" in each story. Earlier I was dabbling with the BOOK function until I discovered that it is still riddled with nasty destructive bugs, so that's not an option.

I'm trying to work out the easiest way to get the literature refs at the end of each Chapter. So far all I can think of is cuting text, unlinking a frame flow, and pasting into the first frame of the unlinked flow. Perhaps the idea of putting each chapter in a story is not so good. What happens if I then write some more content in one of the chapters? Perhaps it's better to keep one story for all chapters and use sections. I'm really not sure. Any advice would be welcome, so I don't change things in a way that will only create more problems. 

Are there any functional relationships or constraints between stories and sections in AffPub2, or are they completely independent? How do publishers usually think about them?

Perhaps I should just have patience till the Book function is debugged.

I'm grateful for any advice and insights. Thanks.

[MikeTO]

10 hours ago, GuyMiklos said:

I'm trying to work out the easiest way to get the literature refs at the end of each Chapter. So far all I can think of is cuting text, unlinking a frame flow, and pasting into the first frame of the unlinked flow. Perhaps the idea of putting each chapter in a story is not so good. What happens if I then write some more content in one of the chapters? Perhaps it's better to keep one story for all chapters and use sections. I'm really not sure. Any advice would be welcome, so I don't change things in a way that will only create more problems. 

Are there any functional relationships or constraints between stories and sections in AffPub2, or are they completely independent? How do publishers usually think about them?

Perhaps I should just have patience till the Book function is debugged.

My personal preference is to make chapter of my books a separate story so if you want to do that I think you'll find it works well. If I add more content it will overset (overflow) the last frame in the story and I can shift+click the overset icon to add more spreads. If I delete content I'll end up with blank pages at the end of the story which I can manually delete. I can change the order of chapters by dragging all of a chapter's pages to a new location in the Pages panel. And as you said, the new endnotes feature would let me add endnotes to the end of each chapter. One more advantage is splitting up a book into separate stories will improve overall performance.

Publisher does not provide an easy way to split stories so cut and paste is the only solution. Start from the last chapter and work backward so that you're only cutting one chapter at a time rather than the remainder of the book each time.

The new v2 Book feature is amazing but if you have a fast computer with sufficient memory you may find it adds complexity without conferring many advantages. My book is rather complex but I've chosen to keep it all as a single document. I'd split it up only if my computer couldn't handle it.

Cheers

[GuyMiklos]

 

thank you Mike for relating your experience and giving me the confidence to move ahead with structuring my book further. I wrote most of the text in MSword, and later continued in google docs all in a single file. 

Your tip on starting the story division cutting and pasting from the end and working forward makes good sense. Thanks.

I really look forward to the Book function getting debugged. I really want a shared style sheet for the two parts of my book. Currently Part 1 is one file consisting of Chapters 1 - 5, 260 pp.. Part 2 another file consisting of chapters 6-9, 270 pp. 

[MikeTO]

14 minutes ago, GuyMiklos said:

I really want a shared style sheet for the two parts of my book. Currently Part 1 is one file consisting of Chapters 1 - 5, 260 pp.. Part 2 another file consisting of chapters 6-9, 270 pp. 

As long as you have named your styles consistently, just use the Text Styles panel's menu to Import Styles from one of them into the other. After choosing which document to import styles from, you'll be prompted with this dialog. Without making any changes, just click OK and the imported styles will overwrite the ones in the open document. You can also duplicate and rename styles during import if you want to.