TIP: Working with PDFs from Dorico in Affinity Publisher

I’m creating a document in Affinity Publisher that has music pages and text pages. So I thought I would document the process, in case anyone finds it useful.

  1. Create your music pages in Dorico. REMOVE the Page Numbers from the Page Templates.

  2. Save a PDF with all the pages you want.

  3. In Publisher, create your new document. Set the image placement option to “Prefer linked” in the new document wizard.
    Screenshot

  4. Click on File > Place. Select your PDF in the file dialog and click OK. You will then see your PDF file listed in the left-hand sidepanel.

Click on the little > arrow, which will then show you thumbnails of ALL the pages. Scroll to the end, and SHIFT-click to select them all.

Then place the image on the first page. (Hold CTRL to see the page image and get it in the right place.)

Now you have a document, with all your PDF pages as linked images.

Create a Master page with page numbers, and apply to all the pages. You can now add/insert pages for text between your music pages, and the page numbers will increment correctly.

Because the PDF pages are linked, you can make revisions to your Dorico project, and over-write the PDF. (As long as things stay on the same pages!) Publisher will either update automatically, or tell you to Update it manually in the Resource Manager.

So, in the following spread, the text is all done in Affinity Publisher; the music from Dorico.

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