I am using Affinity Publisher 2.6.5 on MacOS Tahoe 26.7.1, Apple M-series Silicon.

Something is corrupt in my file. The file has a long history, having been imported from either a PDF created by InDesign, or perhaps directly from InDesign, I can't remember which.

If I try to update the table of contents (either from Text->Table of Contents->Update Table of Contents or from the Preflight Panel then Publisher beachballs within a second and I have to Force Quit it. It worked about 3 weeks ago.

The AIs haven't been much help.

I have tried deleting the TOC and adding a new one but Publisher beachballs when I try to insert. I have looked at my heading and TOC styles and can't see anything amiss. I've looked at the anchor panel but am not sure what a "corrupted anchor" would look like.

I am now tediously walking through the document checking the style on every paragraph.

Much more of this and I will have to use Time Machine to recover a working version and re-apply all the changes to the file. Fortunately it is a mature doc so the changes come in as errata & change requests.

Any suggestions?

Sharing this brushed metal knob design tutorial, made in Affinity using shapes, gradients, and built-in effects. Hope you find it useful.

Hi everybody,

I don’t know why the keyboard keeps shifting to floating keyboard when I use Affinity Publisher 2, and I can’t figure out how to lock it in its normal size, layout and position (as in, either full size at the bottom of the screen, or collapsed so it doesn’t show at all). Honestly, the floating keyboard is easily the worst bit of iOS as a whole, I absolutely lozthe the thing, it’s impossible to work with it, and if I can’t get rid of it, I feel I’ll have to go back to a monthly Adobe subscription, which I’d definitely hate to do.

Do you know of a ‘’don’t offer floating keyboard ever again’’ option somewhere that I’ve been missing, or at least an easy and fast way to put the bugger back in its place?

Thank you in advance.

Hey all, just wanted to share this tutorial on creating a gradient fluid wave using Affinity. Enjoy.

Edit: SOLVED-ISH.

This was actually an issue from using Markdown made in obsidian. Affinity does NOT treat iPad returns (copied from obsidianmd) as new paragraphs (enter key for PC).

I was able to do a find-and-replace in Affinity to fix the issue relatively quickly. Unfortunately, I could not do a replace-all. So, I hit the replace button 1300 times for a 30K word novella. Which honestly, is better than the alternative.

Luckily I know there's a setting in Obsidian to change returns to paragraphs, I just need to figure it out, so that future projects are less of a pain in the patootie.

I probably could have found a more elegant solution, but I'm tired, and in deep suffering. (Only partially caused by this anomaly with Affinity and ObsidianMD.)

Original:

I HAVE SUCCESSFULLY DONE THIS 5 TIMES IN THE PAST. I DO NOT KNOW WHY IT'S NOT WORKING THIS TIME.

PDF novel layout:

I pasted the text from obsidian (markdown).

I did the shift+click to create flow for 60 pages.

I selected all the text (because it's my personal policy to get the body right before I start highlighting chapter headers).

I went to "Edit body" I selected my font. I went to Paragraph, First Line indent, and selected a value.

It worked-ish, but only on text sections with two returns (of which there are only a handful made by accident or between chapter titles).

If I delete the return/new line, and add one again, it will indent! But I really don't want to replace all the returns/enters/paragraphs manually.

Is there something I can do to troubleshoot this?

Here's how to create a colorful confetti using Affinity. Hope it's useful for you all.

Hello, I’m new to Affinity, switching from Adobe after 15 years, as many others are. I’m using it on my iPad, and trying to find my way around as there typically aren’t any drop down menus with clear labels at the top of my screen. So, newbie question of the day, I have a Youtube link in my text and want to make it a clickable hyperlink that will take the viewer of the final PDF to the youtube video. Straightforward enough, I guess, but how do I do it? I’ve looked for help online but only found tips for the desktop version (‘’go to this menu and then…’’). Where is ‘’insert hyperlink’’ hidden? Thanks for your help.

If you're in the middle of migrating from Microsoft Publisher to Affinity Publisher, this might help.

I had a pile of .pub files to move over and couldn't get clean IDML out of anything available, both free and paid. I Built a tool that uses publishers native rendering to do the export. It opens each .pub file and produces both a PDF and an IDML file you can open directly in Affinity Publisher 2 (or InDesign if you're a subscription junky).

What i was trying to fix was Content on the pasteboard / scratch area (placed outside the page boundary), Embedded fonts, Complex multi-page layouts

I'm still testing edge cases and am curious how effective it is with people who used publisher differently than we do.

If you have any files you think could through the software a curveball or need converted use code reddit to convert a file (no cost).

publisherconversion.com

Hello folks - Affinity newbie here, trying to work on an Affinity file that was originally created by someone else.

I am trying to adjust the leading for the body text in a document, and it isn't working correctly. If I adjust the leading to anything 13 pt or under (whether it's set via the Character panel, the Paragraph panel, or the settings of a particular Text Style), nothing changes. However, the second I adjust the leading to 14 pt or higher, the leading gets DRASTICALLY wider. This happens whether I have the text designated with the pre-existing Body text style, or whether I use "no style".

Oddly enough, I'm not having this issue with the existing Headings in the document, just the areas of body text (even though they're all in the same text frame). This issue also occurs even if I change the font.

I've included an image to show you what I mean - the upper part of the image shows what happens when I set the leading to 13 pt, and the lower part shows what happens when I set the leading to 14 pt. Thoughts?

Hey! I started a magazine for the first time but realised that, apparently, the cover should be created as a separate document from the article spreads. There is an ad that should be on the inside front cover. Should the ad be on the second page of the cover document or on the first right-hand page of the article spreads document?

Also, how do you calculate the spine? It is an 8.5 by 11-inch, 68-page, perfect bound, with the cover measuring 8.5 by 11 inches and one page. Could anyone with professional experience in magazine design kindly offer some assistance? I would greatly appreciate it.

I'm about to start work on a coffee table photography book. Several of the images are giant, beautiful panoramas and I'm trying to figure out how to place the images.

I'm aware that you can set it so that only double page templates are visible, but I prefer not to use those for single images because it makes it vastly harder for me to evenly space them out.

Does anyone have any advice on how to place my panoramas?

Thanks in advance.

Hey Guys, I am currently learning to do a magazine. How do I make my text sit exactly on the baseline grid and avoid wide gaps throughout the text? I have been having this problem when I use any of the justified paragraph alignment. Also, how do I get enough spacing after a paragraph, so there is enough white space between each paragraph? The font I am using is Cambria at size 12; the leading is 15pt and the Baseline grid spacing is 15pt. Help!! What should I do?

No idea how to properly word the title, but essentially I have "chapter one" "chapter title". On the left page I want it to have the chapter title in the footer. And on the right page I want it to have the chapter number in the footer. Right now I am using section field to have the section name in the footer. The section name being the title chapter.

I am just wondering if there is a way I can have another field for the chapter number for the right page. I don't want to and likely will not manually change the footer for each chapter, so if I can't get this to work will most likely give up on the idea and just stick with the chapter title on both sides.

Hi everyone, hope it's useful.

So I've now used Affinity Publisher twice to create photography books. Or rather, I am working on the second one now. For some reason, every time I save my projects, they will lose data on images and I have to re-add the images. Its happened many times now.

Does anyone have any idea why this keeps happening?

I'm very close to doing a much larger book with many more images. I don't want to have to re-add 100 files every time I reopen the saved project.

Hello everyone, this is my first time doing a Souvenir magazine for a church anniversary, so i'm a bit nervous😅. The Magazine will be **8.5 by 11inches**.

**Grid System****:** What are the reccommended column and row guide size for a clean layout?.

**Advertisements****:** How do I properly place advertisements while keeping in mind the spacing so they don't itch on each other, the sizes are Half page, Quarter page, Full page and Business listing.

**Running Heads& Headlines:** Does each headline title and banner have to have the same style or can it be different across each page?

I planned to have a Running head for each page for the Ministry title because each page has a Ministry Name. Then the headline text directly below styled in a banner kind of thing. I decided to do it that way because the ministry name and headline title cannot hold in the running header. E.g. Music Ministry — The Voices That Lift Our Worship.

**Finding Inspiration:** What magazines can I draw inspiration from, for a Church anniversary Sounvenir magazine. I'm mostly seeing some good design and layout from funeral memorial magazines as well as some yearbooks(for profile or awardees pages).

Lastly, Is it okay to use print export presets, such as Press Ready, for high-quality commercial printing, or are there other export settings you would recommend?

If there is anyone who is experienced in designing and printing souvenir magazines and can share any tips or best practices for a successful and properly printed magazine I would really appreciate it. 🙏🏼☺️🥹

Hi,

I know there is a dedicated subgroup for Affinity 3, but I miss a place where one can focus on page layout only. We publishers are a tiny minority, so our issues get easily lost among the questions from illustrators.

This would be the right group to continue focusing on that side of the program. Maybe updating the group name could help it continuing to be the right place for this matter?

Hi. A really strange thing is happening with my Frame Text tool. I created a font (which I have been using just fine for years now). Today, my "M" started acting up. The "M" itself yields more a cluster of dots/lines. When I tried it on a different line, it made the text that followed into similar dots and lines. When I deleted that "M," that same text went back to normal

I make layouts with AI a lot now (be gentle). Claude gives me an HTML report in minutes. Getting that into a proper layout file used to mean rebuilding it by hand, box by box, font by font.

So I built idmly. Drop in the HTML, get back a real .idml. Not a flattened PDF, not an image trace. Real text frames, named paragraph and character styles, brand swatches, linked images, editable charts.

I built it for InDesign people, but IDML is the bridge format Publisher reads natively. If you've ever opened an IDML from a client or collaborator and watched the styles fall apart on import, that's usually because the source file was built sloppy. A clean IDML in means a clean import out. I haven't run a full Publisher round-trip test myself yet, which is honestly why I'm posting here. If you try it, I want to know what breaks and how it does.

What it handles well: multi-page reports, CSS columns (real multi-column frames), borders, tables, image-heavy pages. Ran a 30-page client file through it last week, tweaked a couple of elements, straight into production.

What it'll choke on: gnarly text reflow edge cases. Next thing I'm fixing.

First 2 pages of any file convert free, no account. Full license is $49 once. No subscription, I hate them too. Looking for people who've felt the pain of a half-broken IDML import. Go break it. idmly.com

A number of my pages have a square of discolouration over some of the images. See image attached. Can anyone help with this problem. TIA.

Dear Community,

I‘m working on a small informational flyer for my workplace in Affinity publisher on Ipad.

I‘m used to work on a desktop PC and had my file packaging routine from Indesign.
But Recently my file seems to have troube linking to it‘s images when I want to re-open my file to work on it again. Last time I manually replaced all the images but i don‘t want to do it everytime.
Also I don‘t want to embedd all the images since it would blow up the file size immensely and I’d like to be able to fluidly work in the app without it crashing :D

Did anybody here have had the same problem working on Ipad?

How do I solve it?

I‘ve put some screenshots for explainability. They‘re german tho, i wrote the translation next to it.

Thanks for your help!

Worth checking out if you've been curious about this pixel stretch effect.

So I build a book for my photography to sell online. When I go to export the PDF file, for some reason many of the images will have a strange artifact.Where it will look like the top half of the image is torn and bleeds into a random image from later on in the document. I tried exporting a single page from the book , but when I only export a single page , it doesn't replicate the problem.

EDIT: problem solved. The issue was the "rasterize everything" setting. After I turned it off, the pdf exported correctly.

Hi,

I've been using Affinity Publisher for years now, and have successfully laid out five novels with it. I love the software, and had switched from InDesign to it back in 2020.

I'm now laying out a new novel and when I placed the text from a Word document into my new project, on many (but not all) of the pages, the last line is underlined. However, nothing in the software shows that it's underlined, except that visually, I can see it on on the pages in the software. When I export to a PDF, the underlines are not there.

When it appears, it's always the last line on the page, even if I change what the last line is, the underline remains on the last line. It's so very weird.

I think this is just some visual bug that has nothing to do with the actual layout. Like I said, when I export, the underlines are gone. It's only in the text box on the pages.

Has anyone seen that? If so, is there a way to get rid of them? It's very annoying.