Opening and importing

The choice of whether to open or import files is an important decision in Affinity iPad apps. Understanding the difference will help with file management and backup strategies.

You can open Affinity documents, as well as Adobe InDesign, PDF, Illustrator and Photoshop documents into Affinity Publisher.

Opening in place

You can open previously saved Affinity documents from local or cloud storage. When opening, the key point is that these files are kept in their original location and will be overwritten on saving.

Importing by copying

Unlike opening, importing always makes a copy of the original document and loads it as an 'internal' document; you cannot overwrite the original file once it has been imported. Imported documents must be saved as an .afpub file. The imported file could be from Apple Photos library or your local/cloud storage. On saving, the document can be saved to anywhere on your local or cloud storage.

Recent documents are shown as thumbnails at the top of the Home screen for your convenience. They are actually open minimized documents, so saving and closing a document will create a physical file and remove the document's thumbnail from the app's Home screen.

OpenTo open a document in place:
  1. From the Home screen, tap Open.
  2. On the pop-up menu, select Open Document to access your local or cloud storage (e.g., iCloud, Dropbox or other cloud storage).
  3. Navigate to, then tap the file to open.
  4. If linked resources are not found, you will be asked whether you want to locate them. You can tap:
    • Yes to locate missing resources one at a time.
    • Resource Manager to review missing resources and locate only those required at this time.
    • No to open the document without locating anything. Items can be located later using the Resource Manager panel.

Alternatively, you can drag-and-drop an image or document from the Files app directly onto the Home screen to open it.

OpenTo import a document (by copying):
  1. From the Home screen, tap Open.
  2. On the pop-up menu, select Import Document to access your local or cloud storage.
  3. Navigate to and tap the file you want to import.

You'll be prompted to resolve any missing files as you would when Opening documents above.

To display a document:

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