Can text flow from one text box to another?

[chaudhary]

Hi,

I've migrated from Adobe illustrator and am new to Affinity designer.
In Illustrator, text from a text box can be made to continue to another text box.
For eg. (In the image attached) the text from the green paragraph would
automatically flow to the blue text box and then to the orange one. This is easy
in Illustrator using a symbol appearing in the right hand bottom corner of the text box.

Is there a way to achieve this in Affinity designer? 'cause now I'm having to cut and paste the 
text in different text boxes that wont allow me to adjust the entire text at the same time.

[GarryP]

You can’t do this with designer but you can with Publisher.

Plus, with Publisher you can achieve your angular text frames without having to make two layers and keep them up-to-date with each other (see attached GIF).

[chaudhary]

Ah, now l need Publisher then. And just my luck, I just missed the 20% Sale by a day.
Much thanks Garry!

[GarryP]

You’re welcome.
Shame you missed the sale.
They usually do another one at the end of the year but that might be too long for you to wait.

[jmwellborn]

Being sure to Convert to Curves, @GarryP and @chaudhary.   Stupid me.  I dragged that silly text box all over the canvas before I thought, "you dummy (me) it may be a Friday afternoon, but the Node Tool still doesn't work without the conversion."

[walt.farrell]

44 minutes ago, jmwellborn said:

Being sure to Convert to Curves

But be careful when you do that

It needs to be before you as the text to the frame, I believe.

[jmwellborn]

@walt.farrell Then how do you explain GarryP’s example above?  That frame has text in it.  Looks to me as though the text is moving with the frame.

 

[walt.farrell]

Just now, jmwellborn said:

@walt.farrell Then how do you explain GarryP’s example above?  That frame has text in it.  Looks to me as though the text is moving with the frame.

 

If Convert to Curves was used, it was done before the text was added to the frame. If done after the text was added, the text would be curves, not text, and could not flow.

If you have a shape, and convert it to a Text Frame, you get a (Shape Text) layer.

If you have a shape or an empty Text Frame, and use Convert to Curves, you have a (Curve) layer. If you then convert it to a Text Frame you get a (Curve text) layer, which the Node tool can operate on.

[GarryP]

Walt’s correct.

To get the text frame that I supplied in my example, you need to convert the shape to Curves before converting the shape to a Text Frame and then adding the text. Or, you could draw the shape using the Pen tool and then convert it to a Text Frame.

Converting a Text Frame containing text to Curves will convert the shape and the text to curves, making the text uneditable as text.

That’s an important point that I should have made earlier.

P.S. I’ve just noticed a weird ‘bug’ that I’ve reported: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/94630-concave-text-frames-don’t-always-show-the-text-in-the-expected-manner/

[iProVid]

I really need this to happen in Designer, it is a real oversight if it is not possible...

[GarryP]

It’s not an oversight at all; text flow between frames is a Publisher-only feature, by design.
If you want text to flow between frames then you need to buy Publisher.

[nitro912gr]

On 11/27/2021 at 12:08 PM, GarryP said:

It’s not an oversight at all; text flow between frames is a Publisher-only feature, by design.
If you want text to flow between frames then you need to buy Publisher.

but the functionality is there, I just made 2 text boxes with text flow in publisher and copy/pasted to designer and they work in tandem.

Are we sure we don't miss something here? Something in the menu or something?

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, nitro912gr said:

Are we sure we don't miss something here? Something in the menu or something?

The file formats are common among the three Affinity applications, and therefore when you Open an application in Designer that you created in Publisher there are many functions that need to work, even though they are not native functions in Designer.

Designer will handle linked text frames if you set them up in Publisher, but creating linked text frames is intentionally a Publisher-only function.

[Puchacamilo]

On 11/7/2022 at 7:27 AM, nitro912gr said:

but the functionality is there, I just made 2 text boxes with text flow in publisher and copy/pasted to designer and they work in tandem.

Are we sure we don't miss something here? Something in the menu or something?

I'm 100% with you, this is something like the authors think they have to do this way (Publisher-only function) vs what the people wanted/needed.