Category: QuarkXPress 10

How to delete preferences in QuarkXPress

How-to, QuarkXPress 10, QuarkXPress 2015, QuarkXPress 2016, QuarkXPress 2017, QuarkXPress 2018, QuarkXPress 9, Uncategorized, Video TutorialNo Comments

When QuarkXPress behaves erratic, in most cases corrupt preferences are the cause.

Deleting preferences will fix that, as QuarkXPress creates new, fresh preferences upon the next start if it doesn’t find any.

The only thing you will loose is any customization you have done to preferences. Existing documents are not changed and are not affected.

Where to find preferences:

As Apple and Microsoft recommend, by default QuarkXPress stores user-specific files such as preferences in the user folder. Each version of QuarkXPress uses a separate folder, so that different versions of QuarkXPress installed on the same machine do not interfere with each other.

Before deleting preferences, first quit QuarkXPress.

On MacOS

On MacOS / OS X, QuarkXPress stores its preferences in the user Library. Careful, MacOS offers TWO Libraries, a global one and a user one. Preferences are stored in the user library.

Easiest to get to the folder is by going into Finder and choosing:

Go > Go to Folder and then pasting the path in there:

  • For QuarkXPress 2018:
    ~/Library/Preferences/Quark/QuarkXPress 2018/
  • For QuarkXPress 2017:
    ~/Library/Preferences/Quark/QuarkXPress 2017/
  • For QuarkXPress 2016:
    ~/Library/Preferences/Quark/QuarkXPress 2016/
  • For QuarkXPress 2015:
    ~/Library/Preferences/Quark/QuarkXPress 2015/
  • For QuarkXPress 10:
    ~/Library/Preferences/Quark/QuarkXPress 10/
  • For QuarkXPress 9:
    ~/Library/Preferences/Quark/QuarkXPress 9/

(make sure to copy the tilde ~ in the path)

Delete everything in that folder. Restart QuarkXPress.

Please also watch this 30 sec video:

On Windows

On Windows, QuarkXPress stores its preferences in the local app data directory of the user. Though using the same concept, Microsoft did rename the folders in the different versions of Windows.

To find preferences, easiest is to

Press Windows-key and R (for “Run”) and paste the following path in there:

  • For QuarkXPress 2018:
    %localappdata%\Quark\QuarkXPress 2018\
  • For QuarkXPress 2017:
    %localappdata%\Quark\QuarkXPress 2017\
  • For QuarkXPress 2016:
    %localappdata%\Quark\QuarkXPress 2016\
  • For QuarkXPress 2015:
    %localappdata%\Quark\QuarkXPress 2015\
  • For QuarkXPress 10:
    %localappdata%\Quark\QuarkXPress 10\
  • For QuarkXPress 9:
    %localappdata%\Quark\QuarkXPress 9\

(make sure to copy the percent sign % in the path)

Delete everything in that folder. Restart QuarkXPress.

Please also watch this 30 sec video:

Going forward – better than deleting

As you loose all customization, maybe next time it’s a better idea to make a backup of preferences after you have tailored them to your need.

And then – instead of deleting – you replace them with the backup of your preferences.

 

 

Matthias Guenther

Both an engineer and a layout artist, Matthias bridges the gap between technology and people.

Before joining Quark, Matthias pioneered print, Web, and multimedia products for multiple German publishing companies. Since 1997 he has played a central role in shaping Quark’s desktop and enterprise software.
Starting 2003 Matthias has focused on Quark’s interactive and digital publishing solutions. He is an active participant in design and publishing communities and represents Quark in the Ghent PDF Workgroup.

Since February 2014 Matthias heads Quark’s Desktop Publishing business unit and is therefore responsible for QuarkXPress.

https://twitter.com/HamburQ

Vertical measurement palette in QuarkXPress 2018

QuarkXPress 10, QuarkXPress 2015, QuarkXPress 2016, QuarkXPress 2017, QuarkXPress 2018, TipNo Comments

QuarkXPress 2018 introduces a vertical measurement palette (on MacOS), giving you the best of the powerful new measurement palette in QuarkXPress 2017 (which is vertical) and the text labels of the old modal dialog boxes (QuarkXPress 9).

Modal dialog box (QuarkXPress 9):

Horizontal measurement palette in QuarkXPress 2017 (MacOS) & 2018 (MacOS & Windows):

(remember that you can set it to default size – as shown – or as large size, using the cog wheel)

Vertical measurement palette in QuarkXPress 2018 (MacOS):

Shortcuts (Keyboard commands):

All three variants of course share the same shortcut keys to jump to the first input field, e.g. Command+Shift+F for the attributes shown here.

And the measurement palette variants also allow to Cancel or Preview (Apply):

  • Opt+Return is “Apply” (Preview)
  • Esc is “Cancel”
  • Return is “Ok”

More shortcut commands (shortcut keys) are listed here: http://www.quark.com/Support/Documentation/QuarkXPress/

Matthias Guenther

Both an engineer and a layout artist, Matthias bridges the gap between technology and people.

Before joining Quark, Matthias pioneered print, Web, and multimedia products for multiple German publishing companies. Since 1997 he has played a central role in shaping Quark’s desktop and enterprise software.
Starting 2003 Matthias has focused on Quark’s interactive and digital publishing solutions. He is an active participant in design and publishing communities and represents Quark in the Ghent PDF Workgroup.

Since February 2014 Matthias heads Quark’s Desktop Publishing business unit and is therefore responsible for QuarkXPress.

https://twitter.com/HamburQ

Where is the free QuarkXPress Document Converter?

QuarkXPress 10, QuarkXPress 2015, QuarkXPress 2016, QuarkXPress 2017No Comments

 

QuarkXPress Document Converter is a small application that converts documents created by QuarkXPress 3, 4, 5 and 6 to the version 9 format, so that QuarkXPress 10 and higher can open documents last saved by one of those versions.

In other words, you only need it if you have documents older than QuarkXPress 7 and want to open them in a modern version of QuarkXPress. You can find more details and more reasons why you need QuarkXPress Document Converter here: http://www.planetquark.com/2016/08/15/what-is-the-free-quarkxpress-document-converter/

Download the free QuarkXPress Document Converter here:

QuarkXPress Document Converter is a free download. The newest version is always available here:

And when you are using QuarkXPress 2016 (or higher), no need to remember the URL:

You can easily access the download link by choosing the Help menu.

Download once and then use it any time you need it. Remember, the QuarkXPress Document Converter can even batch convert complete disks and folders to the newer v9 format.

Matthias Guenther

Both an engineer and a layout artist, Matthias bridges the gap between technology and people.

Before joining Quark, Matthias pioneered print, Web, and multimedia products for multiple German publishing companies. Since 1997 he has played a central role in shaping Quark’s desktop and enterprise software.
Starting 2003 Matthias has focused on Quark’s interactive and digital publishing solutions. He is an active participant in design and publishing communities and represents Quark in the Ghent PDF Workgroup.

Since February 2014 Matthias heads Quark’s Desktop Publishing business unit and is therefore responsible for QuarkXPress.

https://twitter.com/HamburQ

How to see previews of QuarkXPress documents – even without having QuarkXPress running or installed

How-to, Learn, Plug-in, QuarkXPress 10, QuarkXPress 2015, QuarkXPress 2016, QuarkXPress 2017, QuarkXPress 9, TipNo Comments

QuickLook / Quick View images and other files

Often you need to see a preview of documents that you have on Mac. With images that’s easy, by setting the right preferences MacOS / OS X will show you thumbnails of images and even previews when you select an image and hit the spacebar.

That’s possible because Apple built an interesting technology into MacOS / OS X called QuickLook.

QuickLook can either create or extract previews in certain file types and present them to you, so that it is easier to find out whether it is the right file.

JPG, PDF, movies, audio files, text files and many more.

What about QuarkXPress documents?

You might not have QuarkXPress running or need to visually see a QuarkXPress document on a Mac where you do not have QuarkXPress installed.

On Macs, where you have QuarkXPress installed, this is easy, just hit the spacebar. As QuarkXPress will have installed a QuickLook plug-in on first launch, Finder can show you thumbnails and previews of QuarkXPress documents.

On Macs, where you do not have QuarkXPress installed, you can install a free QuickLook plug-in (made by Quark) to also see previews and thumbnails of QuarkXPress documents. Here’s an extract of an article on forums.quark.com:

Free QuickLook plug-in to preview QuarkXPress projects
This will allow you to see thumbnails of QuarkXPress Projects (.qxp) in Finder and also provide a QuickLook preview.
This works for .qxp files created with QuarkXPress 7, 8, 9, 10, 2015 and 2016; regardless whether you have QuarkXPress installed or not.

1. Download the zipped QuickLook plug-in: Click to download QXP QuickLook plug-in

2. Unzip it.(Unzip by double-clicking the downloaded file.)

3. Navigate to folder /Library/QuickLook/(That’s the main ‘Library’ folder on your Macintosh HD.)

4. Put the QuickLook plug-in into this folder.(So copy the file ‘QuarkXPress.qlgenerator’ there. Finder will probably ask you for permission. If you already find one in there, replace it.)

5. Log off and log on again.

—

(To test whether it works, you can download a sample QXP file: Click to download sample QXP)

And what about “exotic” file formats?

If you have other file formats that you often need to preview and out-of-the-box MacOS doesn’t handle them, then have a look at the following great site, it lists all known QuickLook plug-ins – free and commercial – available for MacOS / OS X:

http://www.quicklookplugins.com/

Matthias Guenther

Both an engineer and a layout artist, Matthias bridges the gap between technology and people.

Before joining Quark, Matthias pioneered print, Web, and multimedia products for multiple German publishing companies. Since 1997 he has played a central role in shaping Quark’s desktop and enterprise software.
Starting 2003 Matthias has focused on Quark’s interactive and digital publishing solutions. He is an active participant in design and publishing communities and represents Quark in the Ghent PDF Workgroup.

Since February 2014 Matthias heads Quark’s Desktop Publishing business unit and is therefore responsible for QuarkXPress.

https://twitter.com/HamburQ

Three Reasons Why You Will Need the Free QuarkXPress Document Converter

How-to, QuarkXPress 10, QuarkXPress 2015, QuarkXPress 2016, QuarkXPress 20171 Comment

A few days ago Quark released the free QuarkXPress Document Converter 1.2.

Here’s when you need the QuarkXPress Document Converter, which is available for OS X and Windows:

1) Convert legacy documents when using a newer version of QuarkXPress

In 2006, so with QuarkXPress 7, Quark modernized the type method of QuarkXPress. So QuarkXPress 7 was the first version to support OpenType functionality of fonts and also uses Unicode to address an kind of glyph in QuarkXPress.

For compatibility reasons, QuarkXPress 7, 8 & 9 continued to carry the older methods, so non-Unicode type and old hyphenation methods and type code not suitable for modern needs.

In 2013, so seven years later, Quark decided to cut out the old code, making QuarkXPress leaner, faster and truly modern.

However, that meant also that QuarkXPress 10 could not open documents that had been last saved by QuarkXPress 6 or before. For that reason Quark released the free QuarkXPress Document Converter, which converts the legacy documents to version 9 documents, which of course can be directly opened with QuarkXPress 10, 2015 and 2016.

Bottomline: Use the QuarkXPress Document Converter if you use QuarkXPress 10, 2105 or 2016 and need to open documents last saved by QuarkXPress 6 or before.

QXP3.3

2) Remove Pasteboard XT references

In the early 90’s an independent XTension developer released Pasteboard XT. While the idea was great, to extend the space of the pasteboard in QuarkXPress, it unfortunately registered itself as a “required XTension”. Meaning that if you had the XTension enabled, every document that you saved also required it, even if you didn’t make use of its functionality. It soon was the first (and only) QuarkXPress “virus” ever.

Though an Pasteboard XTerminator was released a few years later, still many legacy documents, especially from version 4 and 5, carry the flag that Pasteboard XT is needed to be opened. And as nowadays the XTension doesn’t exist anymore, they cannot be opened anymore. Unless you use the free QuarkXPress Document Converter, which can remove the reference and allow you to open these documents with QuarkXPress 9 or higher.

Bottomline: Use the QuarkXPress Converter if you use QuarkXPress 9, 10, 2105 or 2016 and need to open documents that contain references to the Pasteboard XT and you don’t use Pasteboard XT.

pasteboard

3) Remove Web layouts and Flash layouts

In 2002 with version 5 QuarkXPress first added digital publishing capabilities, introducing an HTML4 authoring and export capability. A web layout was a separate layout type that you could create alongside with print layouts. With QuarkXPress 7 you could also author and export Flash layouts (SWF).

The world has progressed and nowadays nobody wants to create HTML4 and Flash (SWF) anymore. QuarkXPress 2016 offers more modern formats for digital publishing, so HTML5 Publications, native Apps for Android and iOS and eBooks (in ePub and Kindle format). Thus the former, HTML4-based web layout and Interactive (Flash) layouts have been discontinued with QuarkXPress 10 and higher.

So if you want to open a project that contains a Print layout along with e.g. a Flash layout, QuarkXPress 10, 2015 and 2016 cannot open it. THus use the free QuarkXPress Document Converter, as it can remove Web layouts and Flash layouts out of projects with Print layouts. Afterwards you can open the project ad have all Print layouts available in QuarkXPress 10, 2015 or 2016.

Bottomline: Use the QuarkXPress Converter if you use QuarkXPress 10, 2105 or 2016 and need to open documents that contain print layouts along with web layouts or Flash layouts.

QXP9_layouttypes

 

Have millions of layouts that need to be converted?

If you have numerous documents that need to be converted, QuarkXPress Document Converter makes it easy for you: Instead of converting each document step-by-step, just point QuarkXPress Document Converter to a folder containing QuarkXPress documents. QuarkXPress Document Converter will convert them all in one go.

And of course QuarkXPress Document Converter will not overwrite your existing files, it will create new ones with the same name and adding “_v9” to their file names.

QDC_1.2

 

Download QuarkXPress Document Converter 1.2 for free

OS X: http://www.quark.com/Support/Downloads/Details.aspx?fid=289

Windows: http://www.quark.com/Support/Downloads/Details.aspx?fid=288

 

(If you use Version 1.2 of QuarkXPress Document Converter, then it will also alert you of newer versions using Quark Update.)

QuarkUpdate

Matthias Guenther

Both an engineer and a layout artist, Matthias bridges the gap between technology and people.

Before joining Quark, Matthias pioneered print, Web, and multimedia products for multiple German publishing companies. Since 1997 he has played a central role in shaping Quark’s desktop and enterprise software.
Starting 2003 Matthias has focused on Quark’s interactive and digital publishing solutions. He is an active participant in design and publishing communities and represents Quark in the Ghent PDF Workgroup.

Since February 2014 Matthias heads Quark’s Desktop Publishing business unit and is therefore responsible for QuarkXPress.

https://twitter.com/HamburQ