Mass text importing feature request

[Anna Ros]

Dear Affinity developers and users,

As a professional writer/publisher I need a facility to easily import large amounts of text in text frames. And with automatic page / text frame generation dependent on the amount of text and default or imported font size. It is impractical to import all text into one frame and create pages manually, create text frames and link them all together to have text spread over the pages. Imagine a 500 plus illustrated novel. That's almost 100.000 words and numerous paragraphs that need manual di- text frame creation is availablestribution over the frames. Totally unworkable and that means that without such a facility Publisher is not an appropriate publishing solution for publishers.
Of course this is different for illustrated works with little text, but a DTP solution is about publishing, not about page design alone.
So how about this scenario:
- text import is available
- page creation is available
- text frame creation is available
- text frame connection is available
Then, please just automate the lot in an auto page/text frame and text distribution feature allowing imports from Word, OpenOffice, plain text and Scrivener (this last one would be a nice extra).
If there is some sort of scripting possible it could even be scripted. We need a proper and feasible workflow!

Without this Publisher will not be workable for publishing of text books like novels, scripts, scientific work, etc.
Hope to receive some response on this as I would hate to trash a nice software package days after it's release.

Cheers,
Anna A. Ros
www.woordenstorm.nl

[MEB]

Hi Anna Ros,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
After importing the text to a text frame positioned where you want, hold down the shift key and click the red triangle on the right side of the frame (bottom). Affinity will create the necessary text frames and pages and will fill them with the remaining text.

[Anna Ros]

32 minutes ago, MEB said:

Hi Anna Ros,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
After importing the text to a text frame positioned where you want, hold down the shift key and click the red triangle on the right side of the frame (bottom). Affinity will create the necessary text frames and pages and will fill them with the remaining text.

A BIG thank you for this! So it can be done. Wonderful! First response was that this would not be possible, but it seems it is. Absolutely bloody marvelous!
Someone suggested me this (which is basically a bit like what you described but more tedious):
"Create a page of the required size. I use A5 just for example, Select File -> Place and go find the docx file. Click on that. The cursor changes to a circle with a down arrow in it. Sort of. Cute litte cursor anyway. Position that inside the page boundary and click. It pulls in the document file. Move it so ti within the boundaries or margins what ever. Then, near the bottom right you will see a beam type cursor appearing, Hold the shift key down and click that right arrow near the I-Beam and presto, the document flows into and auto creates, the pages. The options are in miniscule print right on the bottm of the working screen, over near the left a bit. Very hard to find and see. But as you can see. It works. So this mich just be the companion to Scrivener that a lot of people need."
I prefer your suggestion which is plain and simple.

Thanks again.

[Distill7]

You can either copy/paste the text into a text frame, or place a document into a text frame. Then it's the same step, select the text frame, go to the right edge at the bottom, hold shift and left mouse click, this will create additional pages and fill them with linked text.

[Anna Ros]

Thanks. It was clarified by MEB from Q/A Support. Great help. It works like a charm. Working on a 500-pager right now. No issues.