Find frames with overflowing text

[John Fleet]

If you attempt to save a document (Publisher) with overflowing text in one or more frames, you get a warning. But I haven't found a way to identify the offending frames? - is there a way? (other than just scanning through the (potentially very long) document....

 

[Joaquim]

Please!! that's really a big time consuming problem

[John Fleet]

Glad it's not just me - and I find that more often than not I can't find any such frames, which means either there's a false positive warning or I'm missing something - neither of which are good. It strikes me that one thing which would really help would be some kind of indication - perhaps on the border of the frame that there is overflowing/leftover text. Or even change the outline colour of the frame - perhaps to red to give another visual clue.

[Dan C]

Hi John Fleet  

This isn't currently a feature of Affinity Publisher, but I agree this would certainly be helpful. I'll move this thread to Feature Requests and Feedback for our devs to see and consider!

[Dave Harris]

On 6/21/2019 at 8:41 AM, John Fleet said:

Glad it's not just me - and I find that more often than not I can't find any such frames, which means either there's a false positive warning or I'm missing something - neither of which are good. It strikes me that one thing which would really help would be some kind of indication - perhaps on the border of the frame that there is overflowing/leftover text. Or even change the outline colour of the frame - perhaps to red to give another visual clue.

If you switch on View > Show Text Flow, frames in stories with overflow should get red round markers in the main view. The markers are located where the link handles would be if the frame were selected - they effectively turn into the triangular handles when the frame is selected (and stay red for overflow).

[John Fleet]

Thanks Dave

I'd missed that - very helpful!

 

[JimWelch]

On 6/24/2019 at 11:37 AM, Dave Harris said:

If you switch on View > Show Text Flow, frames in stories with overflow should get red round markers in the main view. The markers are located where the link handles would be if the frame were selected - they effectively turn into the triangular handles when the frame is selected (and stay red for overflow).

 

I also need help with this. I have that setting turned on, but to see the red round markers, you need to use the text tool and click into every single text frame. Is there a way that I can highlight the text frame such as with a red border or even a "locate" like with missing resources? I can't find which text frame has overflowing text and I've spent hours just clicking in every single text frame.

[walt.farrell]

Just now, JimWelch said:

 

I also need help with this. I have that setting turned on, but to see the red round markers, you need to use the text tool and click into every single text frame. Is there a way that I can highlight the text frame such as with a red border or even a "locate" like with missing resources? I can't find which text frame has overflowing text and I've spent hours just clicking in every single text frame.

It sounds like you do not have View > Show Text Flow enabled. If you had it enabled, every text frame would have a blue border, and the frames with overflowing text would have the red dots. You would not need to do anything but scroll through the file looking for the dots. (Or, zoom way out, so all the pages are visible on the screen, which makes the dots easy to find.)

[JimWelch]

It's checked, but every text frame is blue. And I can't see any red dots.

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, JimWelch said:

It's checked, but every text frame is blue. And I can't see any red dots.

Look on your Master Page(s), too. Sometimes the issue shows up there but not directly on the document pages.

[Old Bruce]

17 hours ago, JimWelch said:

It's checked, but every text frame is blue. And I can't see any red dots.

Make sure that View > Show Text Flow is checked. And Walt's advice about checking the Master Pages is very important too.

Edit: You may need to zoom out so you can see several pages at once. The overflow may be outside the pages.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Edit: You may need to zoom out so you can see several pages at once. The overflow may be outside the pages.

Interesting. I wouldn't have thought about that. Probably Publisher should ignore overflow when the text frame is outside the pages, but it doesn't:

[rah1861]

On 8/20/2019 at 5:00 PM, walt.farrell said:

It sounds like you do not have View > Show Text Flow enabled. If you had it enabled, every text frame would have a blue border, and the frames with overflowing text would have the red dots. You would not need to do anything but scroll through the file looking for the dots. (Or, zoom way out, so all the pages are visible on the screen, which makes the dots easy to find.)

Although I agree that this is a good suggestion and something useful to know, in my case all it has proven is that I am getting a false positive. I have all blue frames and no red dots, same as Jim Welch  (yes, I checked the master pages too). I seem to have a slightly different problem than others, however - I only get that error message when I Export the file. When I just save it, I get no error.  Anyway, it's very bothersome because I have to keep telling it to ignore it every time I do my export. :-(

[Jackie Elliott]

Thank you. The forum sorted out my overflowing text frame. It was in a master.

[fiëé]

Thanks for the hint about the text flow option, but in my document there is nothing red, while I get the warning about overflowing text at each export, as @rah1861.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, fiëé said:

Thanks for the hint about the text flow option, but in my document there is nothing red, while I get the warning about overflowing text at each export, as @rah1861.

Then the error may be in with text that is on a Master Page.

As another tool to help you find it, you might consider installing the Publisher beta, as it has Preflight checks that do a better job of identifying this problem. Once you've installed the beta (which will not interfere with your current 1.7 installation) you can make a copy of your .afpub file, open that in the beta, and try the Export. The Preflight studio panel will help you locate the problem, which you can then fix in the 1.7 copy of your .afpub file.

[fiëé]

The only text on my master page is a page number, and its frame is big enough.

Might try the beta, thanks for the hint.

[Catshill]

This can be due to a page incorrectly using a master page. It has happened to me a couple of times. I run through the following loop until the offending page is found and then reapply the master page...

Delete last 2 pages of document > Error on export? > repeat until no error

[Old Bruce]

47 minutes ago, Catshill said:

Delete last 2 pages of document > Error on export? > repeat until no error

Depending on the number of pages you may be better off with Delete last Half of document...

Oh, and do this on a copy of the offending document.

[Catshill]

21 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Depending on the number of pages you may be better off with Delete last Half of document...

Oh, and do this on a copy of the offending document.

Deleting 2 pages at a time starting from the end of the document works for me. Of course taking note of any connected frames. Deleting the last half of a document will guarantee that the issue is on page 30 of a 32pp document.

100% agree re only working on a copy.