Find & Replace Tool for Affinity Designer

[UkeyD]

Hi,

Before publisher arrived I was designing menus in Affinity Designer.  I spent alot of time scrawling through text to find a particular word as there isn’t a Find & Replace tool. With the arrival of Affinity Publisher this feature is available which is Fantastic but it would be really helpful to have this feature in Affinity Designer too as it does really help to speed up the job when searching through lots of text. I know I can now design menus in Publisher but while it’s still in Beta mode and for older menus that need updating in an Affinity Designer doc it would be good to have this option. 

Thanks for your help. 

UkeyD

 

 

[Giggly]

Having the standard Find and Replace functionality in Designer is critical for us as well.  We waste a huge amount of time having to manually search through lots of text and of course we can't be certain to find all the instances without a basic search tool.

Is there a reason this basic functionality is missing from Designer? 

Is there a plan to add it to Designer in the near future?

[emmrecs01]

Both these posts refer to Affinity Designer, but have been posted to the Affinity Photo area of the Suggestions forum.

Perhaps they should be moved?

[Giggly]

apologies. can you move it.

[UkeyD]

Aah ok! Thanks for pointing that out! : ))

[UkeyD]

I’ll re-post it in Affinity Designer forum.

 

[UkeyD]

Ok it’s on the Affinity Designer forum now!

 

[BBG3]

I've just found that Affinity Designer doesn't have Find and Replace tool! 🙁

[EpicCleric]

Yeah, I am in Affinity Designer 2 and I can't find any "Find and Replace" tool either.

[Thomahawk]

Most basic thing like find and replace at least for text, and affinity does not have it. Very poor.

[jimdoria]

I was afraid of this. Came here to see if Designer had it and I'd just missed it.

I have Designer files with thousands of words of text, manually searching just will not work. 😵

Hopefully this will be something that can be added soon. 

[walt.farrell]

40 minutes ago, jimdoria said:

I was afraid of this. Came here to see if Designer had it and I'd just missed it.

I have Designer files with thousands of words of text, manually searching just will not work. 😵

Hopefully this will be something that can be added soon. 

With that much text, you might want to consider using Publisher, which is more suited to text-heavy documents in several ways.

Serif has, so far, shown no sign of wanting to add the Publisher-specific text functions such as Find and Replace to the other Affinity applications.

[Giggly]

I can simply open my Designer files in Publisher and use Publisher's Find and Replace.  It works perfectly well for me.  You can switch back and forth between all three applications to use features specific to each.

[Figmatt]

Locking away this feature in Designer is unbelievable.

[VinceP]

I'm speechless to see it confirmed here. I thought it was me not finding the Finda&Replace dialog. Utterly unbelievable... and if it is a move to push toward buying Publisher too... well.. that's cheap! So come on Serif, add Find&Replace and Font Replacement in Designer.

[mrqasq]

I hear ya'll. Just found it again. Happily I have a Publisher at hand, but one thing I dont understand, and it doesnt belong here - is why I can switch from Publisher to Designer persona, but not vice versa? I have to reopen file in Publisher just to change 50 words in 2clicks. Since I already have paid for full v1 and v2 suite, why the heck can't I access those basic functions. Since I work on prepairing product labels, I have to use different artboards. I was considering using Publisher, but working on pages where I have 3 different labels to each product I was even considering it, but decided against. Now I'm beining punished by myself

[Seneca]

1 hour ago, mrqasq said:

Happily I have a Publisher at hand, but one thing I dont understand, and it doesnt belong here - is why I can switch from Publisher to Designer persona, but not vice versa?

You can easily switch from Designer to Publisher by going to File->Edit in Publisher.

[mrqasq]

yes I know that, and thats how I go by, but it's just curious, why publisher is able to have 3 personas, and other two don't. This bugs me Once I got full suite, why not add those other 2 personas to all 3 softwares. The button would not only close file in one program and open in another, but would just combine them into one. I know that with publisher we would like to work with pixel/vector/pages and thus it makes sense to have those 3 inside one app, but our usages differ from person to person, and I find myself constantly fighting in my head which software should I use for specific task, and usualy during work I keep asking myself same question - why did I choose designer and not publisher For me Publsiher would be perfect if I could temporaly switch off pages completly or get proper artboards functionality built-in.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, mrqasq said:

For me Publsiher would be perfect if I could temporaly switch off pages completly or get proper artboards functionality built-in.

You have Artboard functionality if you use the Designer Persona in Publisher. And if you want to create a document that has Artboards:

1. Switch to the Designer Persona in Publisher.
2. File > New
3. Uncheck option for Default Master Page and make sure Number of Pages is 1.
4. Check option for Create Artboard.
5. Click Create.

Or, Open a Template file that contains Artboards.

[JDW]

On 8/9/2023 at 7:55 AM, Giggly said:

I can simply open my Designer files in Publisher and use Publisher's Find and Replace.

Ah yes!  "Buy Publisher as a one-trick pony even if you will never use it for anything other than Find & Replace!"

That's about as brilliant as deliberately leave out a Find command in Designer!

 

I decided to drop my interest in Affinity after all my years of begging Serif in this very forum to add important features, but here I go and buy version 2 of Designer recently!  And now that I am starting to use it more, I yet again run up against the most basic and infuriating limitations.

Who is running the show, saying what features make the cut and what don't?  That person needs to be show the Exit.  Hiring people here in the comments to run the show instead might prove more effective in making the Affinity suite a true replacement of Adobe apps.  For now, I'm still in a state of complete and utter disbelief at the absence of a simple Find command.  And suggestions to "just use Publisher" border on the insane.

[BBG3]

To me, it is wrong for a simple find and replace I do many actions. Saving my file, closing my file, opening Affinity Publisher, finding the location of the file, opening the file, doing a find and replace, saving the file, closing the file, and opening the file in Affinity Designer and continuing my work...
OMG, There are too many actions.

🤪

[PaulEC]

6 minutes ago, BBG3 said:

There are too many actions

Of course there are! So stop doing it like that and just use the Design Persona in Affinity Publisher. Or use Designer and Open in Publisher when you need to. There’s no need for all this closing files, saving files, locating files that you talk about!

[BBG3]

On 8/11/2024 at 5:59 PM, PaulEC said:

So stop doing it like that and just use the Design Persona in Affinity Publisher

This is not funny. It is 2024. Finding and replacing is a part of MVP. How about finding and replacing in MS Excel when you have MS Word files, or writing your papers in MS Excel, because it is possible?

I think the lack of find-and-replace in Affinity Designer is not related to Affinity's ability; it is related to sales strategy.

[JDW]

2 hours ago, BBG3 said:

This is not funny. It is 2024.

You are absolutely 100% correct.

I have participated in this forum many years.  I have come to learn that the powers that be couldn't care less what people write in this forum as per the lack of a reply in important threads by members of Serif.  That, to me, signifies a lack of concern.  And I say this being a member of many other forums tied to Mac apps, where the developers do participate, and do care as a result.  

What exacerbates the problem are Affinity app users such as PaulEC, whether joking or serious, who do nothing for the apps other than to mildly or strongly defend the status quo of things, which as you know very well isn't good.

When an app doesn't have even a basic "Find" command, you know you've got a serious problem.  And when users defend its absence, you'd better jump ship before it sinks.

And yet, here we are!  Why?  The answer is laughably plain to see. The only meaningful alternative for Mac users outside the Adobe suite which requires eternal Adobe subscription that none of us can afford.  So we remain here in hopes Serif will listen to our requests and make the software better.  But they don't listen.  They make software better only in the ways their limited eyes see it as being better.  We the end users are therefore masochists. We derive a little pleasure from a lot of pain. 

Honestly, nothing short of a complete change of management at Serif will result in meaningful change with Affinity apps.  It's tragic because the apps have so much promise to unseat Adobe from its lofty throne.  It's almost like Serif was setup by Adobe to fail.  It's really quite sad.

If anyone thinks me to be extreme, then I will formally and directly challenge Serif Managing Director Ashley Hewson to prove me wrong in actions, not in words.

[BBG3]

Serif has an amazing find-and-replace feature inside Publisher, and all applications work together nicely. I could say 80% or 90% of the components are shared and the same. I believe Serif can share the find and replace component with AD, but it doesn't do that, so clients purchase Affinity Publisher, which I call a _ sales strategy.

Although Serif is a very small company, it is moving forward quickly. The company is young, and it needs time.