1.7.0.227 Autoflow Broken?

[J.L. Forrest]

When attempting to use SHIFT to outflow multiple pages of text, that feature seems to be broken in 1.7.0.227, whereas it worked before. 

Am I missing something?

Thanks.

 

[J.L. Forrest]

Further information: When attempting to autoflow text in a NEW document, that works fine. When attempting to do it in a document created in an earlier version, it doesn't work.

[Puck]

6 hours ago, J.L. Forrest said:

Further information: When attempting to autoflow text in a NEW document, that works fine. When attempting to do it in a document created in an earlier version, it doesn't work.

I can confirm that (Beta 238)

[jmwellborn]

Apparently I may have the same problem.   Opened a 66-page .afpub document with facing pages in Beta v. 227.    All pages linked perfectly.  Everything edited, images inserted, text wrap perfect.   Knowing that I was going to increase the length of the document by several pages of interspersed new material (being typed directly into the document — not by cut and paste), I added an initial 10 more new blank pages after page 66.   When I reached the bottom of page 66 during the editing, I attempted to continue flowing additional text (which should have been available for text flow because I had entered quite a lot of new material in previous pages) using Shift + Click on the text flow icon.   Nothing.  Not only that, but roughly 7 pages of text which were originally at the end of the document had vanished.   I dragged the bottom of the text frame to see the unplaced text.  Nothing.   V. 227 had wiped out roughly 7 pages of material.    I tried cutting and pasting those 7 pages from a duplicate saved .afpub file into the v. 227 file, setting the Text type cursor within the text frame on p. 66.   Paste did not work.  In fact, it just pasted one page of new text on top of the entire filled text frame on p. 66.   The only way I could get those last 7 old pages back into the document was to draw text frames on each empty new page, then go back to page 66, shorten the frame, Shift+ Click on the linking icon, and then retype everything on those 7 pages from scratch, starting where the end of the old page 66 (now on the new page 67) began.  At that point, I could resize page 66 to the original full length of the document and all the new pages linked into the main 66-page document.

I haven’t tried this in Beta  v. 238.   Hadn’t the stamina.  My MAC Sierra does, but . . .

 

[ROHH]

I confirm the problem - the same behaviour. Autoflow works only in newly created documents, after opening for second time, stops working.

Beta v. 1.7.0.227

[jmwellborn]

So I tried the thing in v. 1.7.0.238.    Same issue, but in a different location.    I opened the .afpub document created in v. 227 and saved as a copy of the original 66 pages, expanded to 72 in v. 227, plus several embedded images properly text-wrapped,  and began adding more embedded images with text wrap  (on purpose, because I wanted to test how much v. 238 could take before "crashing" as some people have stated).    I reached the spread for pp. 66-67 and discovered that two pages of text were unaccountably missing.   What belonged on p. 68 was now on p. 66, and the balance of the document was neatly text-flowed to the last page.   I inserted two new pages after p. 65, and they turned up as pp. 73-74.   So I deleted those two blank pages and tried again.  This time I did get the two blank pages between the spreads 64-65 and 68-69.   I inserted text frames directly on the two new pages 66-67 (not using text frames in the master pages) and attempted to link them to p. 65 and p. 68.   After a very tedious struggle, I managed to unlink the new p. 67 from p. 72, etc. and finally had all of the pages properly linked.   

I went back to the saved copy of the document from v. 227 and copied the two missing pages of text.   Then I tried to paste them at the proper place in v. 238, just before the two new blank pages with linked text frames.   Again, instead of the material flowing in as expected, it was pasted on top of p. 65, with a completely different size text frame, and much text outside of it.   I had to move that strange text frame over to p. 66 and then cut and paste, bit by bit, to get everything back to the way it should be.   But even though everything still showed as linked text frames, those two pages of text are sitting in the middle of the document, unable to be moved back or forth to previous or future pages.   I tried placing an image and text wrapping, just to check.   Nothing doing.  The overflow just vanished instead of appearing on the next page.

I am sorry if this isn't a very clear explanation.   There is surely something I don't understand about pasting from one .afpub document into another .afpub document.

As for the rest, the only other strange thing that happened was that although I had page markers on the master pages, and each document page with the masters applied, three right-hand pages, #45, #5l, and #53 did not have page numbers on them, but an uneditable frame with blue x-marks.    I had to delete Apply Master to each of these pages in order to get rid of the block and insert page numbers manually.

Anyway, these are niggling problems.  It is a small family history this time, not a thumping 500-page volume, and it has turned out beautifully.   It started as a PDF from an InDesign production, saved as an .afpub in Publisher, and then laboriously pasted without format, page  by page into a second new Publisher document, where every line return was manually removed and every text frame was manually linked.   From that point it was reformatted, new paragraph and character styles were created, 67 images were edited in Photo and placed, etc.   At image 66, Publisher very politely suggested that I had rather a lot of embedded images and wouldn't I like to consider linking them?  But when I said no, it went right on working.    In fact, except for the odd problem described above, it was a delight from the start to the finish.

And for those who say that Publisher can't handle long documents, I should state that the first iteration of this "book" was 6.3 MB.   The final version is 42.2 MB and Publisher was just getting started.   There was never a crash or a blip other than the insert-pages, lost-stuff issue which I was able to work around quite handily, and usually I had Publisher, Photo, and Safari all working at the same time, plus firing off and printing screen shots of something historical I needed from the internet.   Hooray for Affinity!!  Hooray for MAC Sierra (which I was strongly advised by the Apple technical types to keep, if it is working well -- which it is.)   I couldn't be persuaded back to Adobe for "all the tea in China," as they used to say about a trillion years ago. 

If there is a glitch somewhere, I hope this helps.   Can't wait to buy the release version!!   Need to spruce up those icons on my dock!!

 

[J.L. Forrest]

Updated to 1.7.0.238 and this is STILL a problem.

For those of us working with documents that have dozens or hundreds of pages, this is definitely a bummer. We can only autoflow pages on new documents. Once a document has been closed and opened, there's no way to autoflow. The shift-click simply doesn't work.

Anyone from Affinity paying attention to this at all?!

[jmwellborn]

12 hours ago, J.L. Forrest said:

Updated to 1.7.0.238 and this is STILL a problem.

For those of us working with documents that have dozens or hundreds of pages, this is definitely a bummer. We can only autoflow pages on new documents. Once a document has been closed and opened, there's no way to autoflow. The shift-click simply doesn't work.

Anyone from Affinity paying attention to this at all?!

Apparently they are busy with other stuff.   But I do hope they can get to this, because it is definitely a problem.   

[jmwellborn]

Whoopee!!!   Looks as though auto-flow has taken a Great Leap Forward!!   I have just been fiddling with a document originally started in a several-betas back version of Publisher, and opened successfully with each succeeding beta.   When I moved it from v. 227 to v. 238, I tried to add several pages of text within the document, and as noted above, had not entirely successful results.

I have just downloaded v. 249 and did the same thing to the document last opened in 238.  EUREKA!    I inserted text within the document, which flowed properly, and then added it to the end of the document, which also worked perfectly.    The one thing I found is that correctly linking the text frames of new pages within the document is still a bit of a struggle.  Linking those at the end is flawless.  

On 2/20/2019 at 9:30 PM, J.L. Forrest said:

Updated to 1.7.0.238 and this is STILL a problem.

For those of us working with documents that have dozens or hundreds of pages, this is definitely a bummer. We can only autoflow pages on new documents. Once a document has been closed and opened, there's no way to autoflow. The shift-click simply doesn't work.

Anyone from Affinity paying attention to this at all?!

   

 

[J.L. Forrest]

I just downloaded 1.7.0.249... which SAYS IT HAS FIXED THE PROBLEM! 

/party/

/dance/

/leap for joy/

*Drumroll*

Let's find out if this thing works!