Copying/Cloning Text Formatting (Peter-N)

[a2jc4life]

Yet another request for this feature!  It's taking me an hour to do what should have only taken about 2 minutes.  

[somnolentsurfer]

Just another voice to chime in asking for this. Obviously I'd normally use styles, but I'm trying to migrate some of my old InDesign templates to Publisher and opening the IDML documents still ends up with quite a mess, and this would be really helpful for copying the styles I have set up between documents. Couldn't quite believe that Publisher doesn't have a text formatting tool that Microsoft Word has!

[zhanchik]

Still waiting for this feature too... not a happy camper in this regard ;(  

[MikeA]

As much as I want the feature, I'm wondering if developers see this kind of request and wonder: "Yes, but what should the program do IF..."

In this case, IF might be: The user selects text containing more than one character format. Then: copies the formatting within the selection, highlights some other text, and pastes formatting.

What exactly should the program do in that case? The word processing program I use seems to "notice" only the character formatting of the first character of the selected text, then applies it (and it alone) when the paste-formatting command is given. It makes sense. Then again, should a copy/paste formatting feature be able to do more than that?
 

[skadhu]

3 hours ago, MikeA said:

As much as I want the feature, I'm wondering if developers see this kind of request and wonder: "Yes, but what should the program do IF..."

In this case, IF might be: The user selects text containing more than one character format. Then: copies the formatting within the selection, highlights some other text, and pastes formatting.

What exactly should the program do in that case? The word processing program I use seems to "notice" only the character formatting of the first character of the selected text, then applies it (and it alone) when the paste-formatting command is given. It makes sense. Then again, should a copy/paste formatting feature be able to do more than that?
 

It doesn't have to be that complicated as there's an easy workaround for the problem: if whatever is in the text formatting at the beginning or the paragraph formatting at the end affects things, select a different word/paragraph format to copy.

It's when formatting already exists and can't be copied that it becomes a problem. All the programs that I use copy text formatting if I select a word, a paragraph if I select a paragraph. That's a pretty basic function. It's the paragraph format copying that is most essential to me, because I often apply styles in ways that are slightly customized to context.

 

[MikeA]

>> It doesn't have to be that complicated

Perhaps not and yet not all users will agree on how the feature should work. Developers can't assume out-of-hand that all users will want the feature to work a particular way. Should the feature be able to both copy paragraph formatting and character formatting? Should it make a difference if a given paragraph's "return character" is selected at the time the "copy format" command is given? Or should it do different things when the paragraph-marker is selected, as opposed to when it is not included within the copied selection? Or, should it always transfer all paragraph formatting, in addition to the character formatting of the first character selected?

[Catshill]

MS Word adopts what I would view as the sensible methodology so I would recommend following that.

[Fabienne S.]

I'm also chiming in to vote for the implementation of this feature! 😃 

[AlbertEp]

please do!

[BES]

On 6/4/2019 at 12:30 AM, fde101 said:

Welcome to the Forum!

I would suggest saving it as a character style in the Text Styles panel then applying that style to the new text.

Text and paragraph style is not working fine, copy and paste format is an essential feature missing,. 

[Tonio DG]

Hello Affinity team,

Please implement it, it's an important feature to save time.

[Dorothea]

I've just purchased the Affinity programs ... and have read through the comments, is there a copy text tool yet?

[Old Bruce]

2 minutes ago, Dorothea said:

I've just purchased the Affinity programs ... and have read through the comments, is there a copy text tool yet?

Use the text caret to select the text and then use the Edit menu to copy the text.

[Dorothea]

Oh, thanks for your response but I mean copying the text style like what was discussed in this thread. Used to be a dropper icon in the InDesign program.

[MikeTO]

11 minutes ago, Dorothea said:

Oh, thanks for your response but I mean copying the text style like what was discussed in this thread. Used to be a dropper icon in the InDesign program.

No. But you could create a new character or paragraph style based on the current formatting and then apply it to other text.

[Dorothea]

Thanks then ... I'll do that while I wait patiently and expectantly, with great eagerness and high hopes!

[skadhu]

Honestly, I can't see why there's so much resistance to this idea, it is so fundamental to so many programs. I am very fussy about typography. That means I create a set of styles and then oftern modify them slightly to adapt them so that they are optimized in very specific usage contexts. In many cases that means a modification is only used two or three times—it's not worth creating a whole separate style, figuring out what to call it so that I can distinguish it from the other other variations of the style, and then doing the whole thing again and again. I would end up with a really cumbersome and unusable list of styles and I would spend more time creating styles than applying them.

This is such a basic and important function for my workflow—and NOT something that creating styles is a viable alternative for—that if Indesign didn't use a subscription model I wouldn't even consider Affinity products. As it is I simply get pissed off every time I need it.

[AlbertEp]

same here.

[Ana Mendes]

I'm also letting you know that I'd like a "copy format" tool. heheh

I wish these kinds of small add-ons could be downloaded. 

[MikeTO]

One additional reason this feature would be helpful is Affinity lacks a "current formatting" feature, or if it has one, it really doesn't work. If you have the text cursor in some 24pt red Times text and then start a new text frame, it should be 24pt red Times, it should have all the styles and attributes of the last text you edited. Instead, when you start a new text frame it is back to the default styles and attributes except curiously for the colour which will still be red. Or sometimes it will be red and 24pt. Or sometimes it will be the colour and size of text that you previously edited but not the last text you edited. Or sometimes it will be the size of text you previously edited but the colour of the text you last edited. I can't figure out if Affinity is supposed to have a current formatting feature and it's just not working or it doesn't have one and it's just messed up.

For now, the workaround to the lack of a or broken "current formatting" feature is to copy one character of the text whose styles or attributes you like, start a new text frame, and paste that character in. Backspace to clear it and then start typing. This won't help if you want to apply those attributes to existing text but it's something.

[MikeTO]

There are also two workarounds for the lack of a copy/paste format feature without cluttering up your styles but they take some effort so you'd only want to do one of these if you're desperate to make A look exactly like B.

Easy clipboard option:

1. Copy one character of the text whose format you want to copy.
2. Paste the clipboard before or after the text you want to "paste the format" onto. If you want paragraph attributes, start a new paragraph before pasting.
3. Cut the text you want to "paste the format".
4. Select the character you pasted in, the one with the formatting you like.
5. Choose Paste Without Format.

Harder style option: This trick is easier to do in other apps due to the way Affinity handles deleting styles.

1. Place the text cursor (insertion point) into the text whose formatting you want to copy.
2. Create a new paragraph or character style, whatever makes sense for what you're doing. Don't worry about the name, let it be the default name "Style".
3. Apply that style to the text you wanted to format.
4. Click the style's menu icon in the Text Styles studio panel and choose "Detach Characters from Style" where Style is the name of the style you created.
5. Place the text cursor back into the text whose formatting you copied and then click the style's menu icon in the Text Styles studio panel and choose "Detach Characters from Style" again.
6. The style will still be selected in the Text Styles studio panel so now click the Delete (transhcan) icon in its bottom right corner to delete the style. You can also do this from the style's menu icon of course.

You have to jump through hoops to do this because of the way Affinity handles the deletion of styles. In most apps, if you delete a style its attributes remain applied to the text so that deleting the style has no visual impact on the document's formatting. This is non-destructive style deletion. In other apps, you're prompted to ask whether or not the attributes should remain applied. But in Affinity, deleting a style removes all of its formatting attributes from the text so you're back to the base [no style]. Sort of, there are bugs so sometimes it will leave behind an attribute like bold.

[visualsoup]

This missing copying of styles is slowing creativity down!

So here's a new workaround for you...   today I fired up a very old copy of inDesign styled some text then opened up the file in Affinity Designer and moved the text to a new document... trouble is inDesign is easier and I'm getting tempted to switch back. :(

 

[BenKr]

Is this really still not adressed in Affinity 2? I currently struggle with this and it's a major pain to just pick and apply a style to a different text. A "Copy Style" shortcut is a must and has been in Word for a decade now as far as I know. CTRL+Shift+C and then CTRL+Shift+V. This really bugs me and should be standard by now!

[Dan C]

Welcome to the Affinity Forums @BenKr!

34 minutes ago, BenKr said:

I currently struggle with this and it's a major pain to just pick and apply a style to a different text. A "Copy Style" shortcut is a must and has been in Word for a decade now as far as I know. CTRL+Shift+C and then CTRL+Shift+V.

In Affinity, you can use 'Copy' (CTRL + C) on your source text, then you can use 'Paste Style' (CTRL + Shift + V) on your destination text to copy the style between the 2.

You can also use the 'Style Picker' tool to achieve this without the need for keyboard shortcuts - https://affinity.help/publisher2/English.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Tools/tools_stylePicker.html&title=Style Picker Tool

I hope this helps

[BenKr]

2 hours ago, Dan C said:

Welcome to the Affinity Forums @BenKr!

In Affinity, you can use 'Copy' (CTRL + C) on your source text, then you can use 'Paste Style' (CTRL + Shift + V) on your destination text to copy the style between the 2.

You can also use the 'Style Picker' tool to achieve this without the need for keyboard shortcuts - https://affinity.help/publisher2/English.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Tools/tools_stylePicker.html&title=Style Picker Tool

I hope this helps

It does! Thank you!
It's just different to the workflow I'm used to (explicitely choosing to copy just the style with CTRL + Shift + C and paste that with CTRL + Shift + V) which is why I was so confused.
Please pardon my disgruntled post, I was just in the middle of my workflow and really didn't want to deal with something as minor - and couldn't find this simple explaination on Google. Glad this works!  
Thank you for the swift reply!