Find & Replace Tool for Affinity Designer

[Giggly]

Having a basic text Find and Replace functionality in Designer is critical for us.  We waste a huge amount of time having to manually search through lots of text and 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?

[stokerg]

Hi Giggly,

I honestly don't know if it will be coming to Designer.  As explained by MEB here Designer is mainly a vector/raster hybrid app and working with large amounts of text will be more suited to Affinity Publisher (which does have Find and Replace).

[Giggly]

Hi stokerg,

Thank you for linking to another of what I am guessing are many posts strewn throughout this forum asking for this basic functionality going back to at least November 24, 2014. As pointed out in your linked post, Illustrator, another vector/raster hybrid desktop application, has this basic text Find and Replace functionality.  Even the free and open source inkscape, another vector/raster hybrid desktop application, has this basic text Find and Replace functionality, although to be accurate, inkscape's Find and Replace functionality is pretty advanced and elegant.

PagePlus, which I used for many, many years is a vector/raster hybrid desktop application and it has basic text Find and Replace functionality.  Publisher is a vector/raster hybrid desktop application and according to your reply it has text Find and Replace functionality.

I'm seem to recall that one of Affinity's biggest selling points going back many years has been how integrated Photo, Designer and Publisher are with a shared and consistent code base.  Since you already have the expertise and code from PagePlus and Publisher why can't you incorporate it into Designer? 

Your user base has been asking for this basic functionality for many years.  We love Designer and we desperately need this basic functionality.

[JesseM]

I agree with this. The functionally makes sense.

I would like to see it also apply to design settings as well. So that you can find all the instances of 2 pixel strokes that are yellow and make them orange for example. 

[stokerg]

On 10/13/2018 at 1:52 PM, Giggly said:

Since you already have the expertise and code from PagePlus and Publisher why can't you incorporate it into Designer? 

We can't port code from PagePlus in Affinity range.  However!, Now we have the Feature in Publisher, it's possible we may see it in Designer.  It not my decision if that happens but i'll see what i can find out and update back here   

 

24 minutes ago, JesseM said:

I agree with this. The functionally makes sense.

I would like to see it also apply to design settings as well. So that you can find all the instances of 2 pixel strokes that are yellow and make them orange for example. 

That has also been requested before, so we know it's a wanted feature.  Again i can't give any confirmation on if or when it would be.

[v_kyr]

At least text based search, aka Find and Replace, shouldn't be that much of a deal to implement and add for all apps. Especially where other related text handling things are already there (like Caps, To-lower- and uppercase, spell checking etc.). - However, if added, it would be fine if text find/replace could then also offer to deal with regular expressions, in order to allow some sort of more finer grade text matching and handling.

[Giggly]

Hi stokerg,

can you provide an update on this basic but critically needed functionality?

On 10/14/2018 at 1:30 PM, stokerg said:

However!, Now we have the Feature in Publisher, it's possible we may see it in Designer.  It not my decision if that happens but i'll see what i can find out and update back here   

 

[putude]

Find & Replace text and Change Case is a basic tools should available in this software. 

[Pšenda]

8 hours ago, putude said:

is a basic tools should available in this software

If you're talking about Affinity Publisher, it's definitely yes.

But if it's about Affinity Designer, there's something else I'm thinking about as the "basic tools".

[Giggly]

Hi stokerg,

can you provide an update on this basic but critically needed functionality?

On 12/12/2018 at 4:25 PM, Giggly said:

Hi stokerg,

can you provide an update on this basic but critically needed functionality?

On 10/14/2018 at 1:30 PM, stokerg said:

However!, Now we have the Feature in Publisher, it's possible we may see it in Designer.  It not my decision if that happens but i'll see what i can find out and update back here   

[putude]

16 hours ago, Pšenda said:

If you're talking about Affinity Publisher, it's definitely yes.

But if it's about Affinity Designer, there's something else I'm thinking about as the "basic tools".

Why not ?

I am not talking about Affinity Publisher. 

Its available on Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw even in Inkscape. 

[Giggly]

Hi stokerg,

can you provide an update on this basic but critically needed functionality?

 

On 12/19/2018 at 7:01 AM, Giggly said:

Hi stokerg,

can you provide an update on this basic but critically needed functionality?

On 12/12/2018 at 4:25 PM, Giggly said:

Hi stokerg,

can you provide an update on this basic but critically needed functionality?

On 10/14/2018 at 1:30 PM, stokerg said:

However!, Now we have the Feature in Publisher, it's possible we may see it in Designer.  It not my decision if that happens but i'll see what i can find out and update back here   

 

[babmo]

If you can typeset more than a few words, why shouldn‘t there be a find & replace?

It would be even more useful if you could search & replace paths/objects like in FreeHand.

[Giggly]

Hi stokerg,

can you provide an update on this basic but critically needed functionality?

 

On 1/11/2019 at 9:59 AM, Giggly said:

Hi stokerg,

can you provide an update on this basic but critically needed functionality?

 

On 12/19/2018 at 7:01 AM, Giggly said:

Hi stokerg, 

can you provide an update on this basic but critically needed functionality?

On 12/12/2018 at 4:25 PM, Giggly said:

Hi stokerg,

can you provide an update on this basic but critically needed functionality?

On 10/14/2018 at 1:30 PM, stokerg said:

However!, Now we have the Feature in Publisher, it's possible we may see it in Designer.  It not my decision if that happens but i'll see what i can find out and update back here   

 

[Pšenda]

 

[Giggly]

Hi stokerg, 

can you provide an update on this basic but critically needed functionality?

 

On 1/20/2019 at 1:01 AM, Giggly said:

Hi stokerg, 

can you provide an update on this basic but critically needed functionality? 

 

On 1/11/2019 at 9:59 AM, Giggly said:

Hi stokerg,

can you provide an update on this basic but critically needed functionality?

 

On 12/19/2018 at 7:01 AM, Giggly said:

Hi stokerg, 

can you provide an update on this basic but critically needed functionality?

On 12/12/2018 at 4:25 PM, Giggly said:

Hi stokerg,

can you provide an update on this basic but critically needed functionality?

On 10/14/2018 at 1:30 PM, stokerg said:

However!, Now we have the Feature in Publisher, it's possible we may see it in Designer.  It not my decision if that happens but i'll see what i can find out and update back here   

 

[walt.farrell]

Serif generally doesn't comment on the timeline of possible future features, so even if @stokerg knows he probably can't say. But we can see that it's not part of the 1.7 beta, so I doubt you'll see it soon (unless they're planning to slip it in later in the 1.7 beta cycle, which I doubt).

It exists in Publisher, though, so if you desperately need find/replace you might consider doing those projects in Publisher.

[Giggly]

Hi Walt,

stokerg, who works for Serif, replied to my post in October and said he would "update back here."   So Serif did reply here and committed to updating us in this forum.  As I stated in my original October post, since the feature was already in Publisher, and they boast about the Affinity shared code base, it shouldn't be a big deal to port the functionality from Publisher to Designer.  I, like many others, have invested significant resources into my Designer work so telling us to just use Publisher is problematic from a technical perspective and if it's technically feasible, from a requisite resource investment perspective for us to port all of our works.  There is a reason they have two different products and why we chose to work with Designer.  As we have been saying for months: "this is basic functionality" even included in free software such as inkscape.

[walt.farrell]

10 minutes ago, Giggly said:

I, like many others, have invested significant resources into my Designer work so telling us to just use Publisher is problematic from a technical perspective and if it's technically feasible, from a requisite resource investment perspective for us to port all of our works. 

But if you own Publisher you don't need to "port" your work. You can easily open .afdesign documents in Publisher and work on them there, and easily move back to Designer if you need to do something that Publisher can't. (Though, as Publisher will have a Designer Persona it's possible you won't need to move back and forth as we need to now.)

[Giggly]

Hi Walt,

Some of our documents have over 50 Artboards so I imagine there might be technical issues.  Having to jump to Publisher for such a basic functionality is a weak technical solution for such basic functionality. Serif should update us as they promised in October.

I am also concerned about using beta software on our production files.

[walt.farrell]

30 minutes ago, Giggly said:

I am also concerned about using beta software on our production files

You certainly shouldn't do that.

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, Giggly said:

Serif should update us as they promised in October.

And do you really think, that you can reach it perpetual repeating your queries?

[Giggly]

I think it's important to document when the question was asked, when they committed to providing an update and how many times we have to repeatedly ask for the update.  This is critically important to us and others.  If I don't keep it on the front burner, who will? 

[putude]

On 1/27/2019 at 9:17 AM, Giggly said:

I think it's important to document when the question was asked, when they committed to providing an update and how many times we have to repeatedly ask for the update.  This is critically important to us and others.  If I don't keep it on the front burner, who will? 

We should wait for the update. We could not force the developers to do this. As a user, we don't know how difficult to develop this app to become a great tool (with an affordable price too).

Sadly Affinity Publisher is still in Beta Version. I've tried to use it (at least once), however, I cannot edit/open my test project in Affinity Designer/Affinity Photo (incompatible ??). So my project stuck in Affinity Publisher Beta. Hopefully, this app will be released soon at an affordable price similarly with their brother and sister. I believe AP will become a great app for the people.

[Giggly]

As stokerg documented in his first response to my first post in this thread, Designer users have been asking for this at least since November 24, 2014!  Going on 5 years!

Sitting back and waiting has not worked!  The squeaky wheel gets the grease!  Why?  Because the rider doesn't know there is a problem, or can ignore and forget the problem, unless the wheel tells them.  Change doesn't happen by sitting back and wishing it.  We need more squeaking not less.

People In these threads have said they are not using Designer because it doesn't have search and replace text.  That's ridiculous since the Affinity development team already has the code in Publisher and they boast about the shared code base between the Affinity family of products!

As stokerg said almost 4 months ago:

On 10/14/2018 at 1:30 PM, stokerg said:

Now we have the Feature in Publisher, it's possible we may see it in Designer.

Just using Publisher is not a solution for putting this most basic of functionality in Designer that should have been there in the first place.