Using one Publisher File as Template for Many

[Chiyonosake013]

I was wanting to start using Publisher for documentation at work and would like to keep all of the generated documents looking the same even though 5-6 people will be creating them.  What would everybody suggest be the best way to accomplish that?  I realize there aren't tutorials yet.  I created a few layouts as drag-drop assets, which will help some, but it'd still be nice to be able to have 3-4 different Master Pages that just acted like Templates that you could drag into place, then just edit the pictures or text that are on them. 

Does that make sense?  Or does anybody have any good ideas on how to create something like this so that I could generate assembly/testing/shipping documents that all have the same formatting?  I'd greatly appreciate any input

[Old Bruce]

Seems like you are at least 90% there at the moment. Affinity products do not have Templates but you could make one finished "assembly/testing/shipping document" Save a copy of it naming it 'Assembly-Template' then strip out everything you don't need and just have the Master Pages and a blank page. On Mac we can lock the documents so they are Read Only and when we open them we have to do a Save As... before we can do anything like work on it. This system of a locked document works for me. All my Styles are there in each document and they are different from the default styles and the styles in the other lock documents are unique to them as well.

[R C-R]

9 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

On Mac we can lock the documents so they are Read Only and when we open them we have to do a Save As... before we can do anything like work on it.

The Mac Finder also has a "Stationery pad" option that is very useful for creating template files. As explained here, when a file's "Stationery pad" box is ticked, opening the file will create & open a copy of the file with " copy" appended to the file name, leaving the original untouched.

The only thing that might be considered a drawback to using this instead of the "Lock" option is that on opening a file with the "Stationery pad" option enabled, the new copy of it is immediately saved to the same folder as the original. So if users want to save the copy to some other location, that has to be done manually in Finder. That can be done relatively easily by using Affinity's File > Reveal in Finder option (even on-the-fly while the file is open in Affinity) but it is still an extra step.

[Move Along People]

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[walt.farrell]

13 minutes ago, haakoo said:

Why not use an embedded APu file for this?

Embedded files will only display one page. Wouldn't that make using them as a template a bit difficult?

[Move Along People]

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[Old Bruce]

3 hours ago, R C-R said:

The only thing that might be considered a drawback to using this instead of the "Lock" option is that on opening a file with the "Stationery pad" option enabled, the new copy of it is immediately saved to the same folder as the original. So if users want to save the copy to some other location, that has to be done manually in Finder.

Which is why I use the Locked version.

[Chiyonosake013]

17 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Seems like you are at least 90% there at the moment. Affinity products do not have Templates but you could make one finished "assembly/testing/shipping document" Save a copy of it naming it 'Assembly-Template' then strip out everything you don't need and just have the Master Pages and a blank page. On Mac we can lock the documents so they are Read Only and when we open them we have to do a Save As... before we can do anything like work on it. This system of a locked document works for me. All my Styles are there in each document and they are different from the default styles and the styles in the other lock documents are unique to them as well.

I didn't realize that you could do that on a Mac.  That would help me as that's what I've been using but not anybody else in the company.  I've slowly been getting pulled more and more into that dark side.  Thank you though. I appreciate the reply!