Be able to hide a page

[Jonashellsen]

Hi! 

I just completed a product catalog for an eyewear designer. Everything, well almost, works perfectly. The possibility to hide things in the layers panel are worth really much. Objects you are going to use later, but not at the moment. This would also be perfect to do on actual pages. The possibility to hide a page when you're working on a product catalog would be lovely. To be able to produce the page, but hide it (out-grey-it) until it's supposed to be i use. For example, some products are, produced, you have the page made, but it shouldn't be in the PDF just yet. 

[Old Bruce]

I would use the layers palette and just hide all the elements on that page. Or cover it with a white rectangle.

[Jonashellsen]

Well, that wouldn’t hide the page on an export. It would just leave a white blank page in the pdf. Before in indesign I always had to do different versions of the document to give different versions to different clients. If I were able to do one “complete” version of the catalog and then just “deactivate” different pages for different versions it would be lovely. It’s quite common when you are working with product designers especially in fashion, that the designer fiddle around with different versions and styles of a product and it should sometimes be published and sometimes not, and you never know when a discontinued version reappears. To just be able to “reactivate” a page would save a lot of work. 

[Old Bruce]

Oh, I misunderstood. You want pages 1-7 followed by pages 9-12 to give to the client.

29 minutes ago, Jonashellsen said:

a discontinued version reappears

or a discontinued version is created. 

Seriously though, in this case I would have a finished product catalog and make a 'Current working copy' and just delete the pages from that, eats up hard drive space but helps to keep you sane. 

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Jonashellsen said:

If I were able to do one “complete” version of the catalog and then just “deactivate” different pages for different versions it would be lovely.

You can manually omit certain pages when you Export or Print the document. That might suffice for a small number of pages, or for groups of pages, but would be cumbersome for frequent use of a large number of scattered pages.

[Seneca]

4 hours ago, Jonashellsen said:

To be able to produce the page, but hide it (out-grey-it) until it's supposed to be i use

Hiding pages makes sense only if they are not facing pages, I suppose.

The best way to handle this scenario is to have an option for Pages to PDF in the Export Dialog. What we already have in the print Dialog.

[walt.farrell]

4 minutes ago, Seneca said:

The best way to handle this scenario is to have an option for Pages to PDF in the Export Dialog. What we already have in the print Dialog.

The Export dialog allows page selection, just like the Print dialog. Unless I've misunderstood what you mean.

[Seneca]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

Unless I've misunderstood what you mean.

You are absolutely right. The export dialog allows one to select pages to be PDFed. So, really, no need to worry about hiding a page to exclude it from export.
One can PDF pages one needs.

[WhiteX]

Hi, does anyone have a working solution to this? Apparently you can't select your pages in the export dialog, there are two options. All pages or individual pages, you can't select multiple pages. The "Don't export layers hidden by Export Persona", does something else.

[Murfee]

11 minutes ago, WhiteX said:

Hi, does anyone have a working solution to this? Apparently you can't select your pages in the export dialog, there are two options. All pages or individual pages, you can't select multiple pages. The "Don't export layers hidden by Export Persona", does something else.

Hi WhiteX, its not ideal for publications with a lot of pages but you can select individual pages by adding the page number separated by commas.

[Joachim_L]

Into the field Pages you can type in pages separated with a comma or a range, like 1,5,11,12-25

Edited June 19, 2019 by Joachim_L
Oops, too late

[WhiteX]

Thank you @Murfee and @Joachim_L. That really works in Publisher. For some reason I thought the export dialog is identical throughout the apps. For now I still use Designer to create PDF's. It would be nice if they've ported this feature to Designer too.

[Old Bruce]

2 hours ago, WhiteX said:

Thank you @Murfee and @Joachim_L. That really works in Publisher. For some reason I thought the export dialog is identical throughout the apps. For now I still use Designer to create PDF's. It would be nice if they've ported this feature to Designer too.

If you are wanting to export individual Artboards from Designer the Export Persona may have what you want. Just select the ones you want by checking the boxes.

[WhiteX]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

If you are wanting to export individual Artboards from Designer the Export Persona may have what you want. Just select the ones you want by checking the boxes.

Yes, I'm aware of that. I'm just missing a feature where you can export a single pdf file with individual pages and being able to hide certain - unneeded - ones from the resulting document.

[batistalex]

I was also looking for a solution to this problem. The alternative of select pages when printing doesn't completely solve the problem when you have page numbering because obviously, the counter pages will not be correct.

Any change this feature will be available sometime?

[Zabu]

This would be invaluable for thinking through what goes into a particular proposal or pitch deck for me. I have a range of audiences with slightly different needs, and so will make a few alternative pages. I can export the right deck, but without being able to hide/turn off pages, I can't flip through to test the flow of a presentation before I export it.

I have exactly the same problem with arranging alternative versions of pages of a graphic novel or poetry book.

The greatest advantage of Affinity, for me, is that it focuses on these 'live' previews or prototypes. You see colours, lines, images as you are making them. Why not have the same power in organization? Especially if it is so easy to do? Simply make it so a page can be visible or not and a keystroke lets you flip through 'visible' pages, so you see the logic of a particular flow, before exporting that prototype? You've done all the hard things. This would just realize that potential.

Currently there seems to be no power for organization. Would that not be a of something that tries to be a publishing tool?

Is this anywhere on the roadmap?

[jarcon]

On 6/29/2020 at 10:44 AM, batistalex said:

I was also looking for a solution to this problem. The alternative of select pages when printing doesn't completely solve the problem when you have page numbering because obviously, the counter pages will not be correct.

Any change this feature will be available sometime?

I'm facing the same issue and certainly this improvement in the app can avoid several versions of the same document.

One workaround is to create sections in the document and change the page number based on the pages you want to hide. This can solve the issue, however this process is not efficient and can lead to mistakes.

[MikeTO]

There is a way to do this in version 2. Create a section for the pages you don't want exported and deselect "Include on export". This will prevent the pages in this section from being exported or printed.

v1 on the left, v2 on the right.