Preflight

Affinity Publisher's preflight check feature can be used to ensure that your document exports or prints as intended. The preflight check can be run on demand—e.g. prior to output—or 'live' on a continual basis.

Preflight

The Preflight panel.

Preflight checks the contents of your file for errors, ensuring the file is ready for print or export.

Preflight notifications

With preflight enabled, the bell-shaped preflight indicator in the status bar will change colour to indicate whether warnings or errors have been detected in the document.

Hovering over the preflight indicator when it is red will reveal the number of errors preflight has found. Clicking on the indicator takes you directly to the Preflight panel.

Editing the Preflight profile

The Preflight panel uses a default set of checks, but these can be customised. The Preflight panel's Options menu Edit profile function allows you to tailor preflight checking to your needs. You can control the severity level for preflight issues, set values and thresholds that trigger preflight warnings and errors, and control how placed documents work with preflight.

Errors and warnings

The Preflight panel displays a full list of warnings and errors it has found, allowing you to pinpoint and correct certain errors where they appear in your document.

The types of items that are listed are determined by the active preflight profile's settings. Two different icons may be shown to indicate severity:

The full list of preflight warnings and errors is as follows:

Double clicking on an issue in the panel will take you to its location in the file. A Fix button beside certain issue types allows you to fix them immediately.

If enabled, preflight will be re-run on print and export. If there are errors (not warnings) in the file, a dialog offers the chance to abort the export and go to the Preflight panel to review the errors.

Preflight user comments

Preflight user comments can be added to objects in your publication, creating a custom check to be made prior to print or export. This has many uses, including the ability to:

When a user comment is added, it will be listed in the Preflight panel to be checked later.

To access the Preflight panel:

Do one of the following:

Panel Preferences To configure preflight settings:
Panel Preferences To save a preflight preset:
To change the bleed hazard safe zone edge:
To enable preflight to check for issues:
To disable error checking:
To check for issues immediately:
To view further information on an issue:
To view an object marked with an issue in the file:
To automatically fix an issue in the file:
To set preflight user comments:
  1. In the document view or on the Layers panel, -click on an object or a layer group and select Preflight Comment>Set.
  2. Enter a comment into the Comment text box, then select OK.
To clear preflight user comments:
  1. In the document view or on the Layers panel, -click on an object or a layer group and select Preflight Comment>Clear.

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