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LinSims
Community Expert
Community Expert
Jan 14, 2019 2:22 PM UTC
Question

Close without saving does not unlock files?

I'm not sure if this has to do with our IT company moving us all to a new server, especially since the FM files are local to my machine. However, the last couple of weeks I've noticed that FM asks me if I want to close files without saving them, even if I've only opened them without making changes. When I click Yes, everything closes ok, but the next time I go to open the book or the individual chapters, I get a message that the files are locked. Sure enough, when I check, the .lck files are still there. They weren't closed.

This is getting to be a bloody nuisance. I don't know why FM is suddenly asking me if I want to save files I've made no changes to, and I don't know why it isn't clearing the .lck files. I want BOTH of these things to STOP. Does anyone have any ideas?

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8 replies

LinSims
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LinSimsCommunity ExpertAuthor
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Jan 15, 2019 5:47 PM UTC

Our IT department updated my video and WiFi drivers. So far, so good, the issues seem to have cleared up, and saving even if I don't make changes has taken care of the (to me) mysterious .lck files. My recollection is that FM didn't do this prior to update 2 of FM 2019, which is probably why I got so confused!

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LinSims
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LinSimsCommunity ExpertAuthor
Community Expert
Jan 14, 2019 3:14 PM UTC

The other odd thing I've noticed is that if I try to open a file (.book or .fm) by double-clicking on it in Explorer, it doesn't open. This is not an issue with opening, say, text files in Notepad++ or Visio files. Again, used to work, now it doesn't. Seems to have started, I think, when Update 2 was installed. Easy enough to work around, but bloody annoying.

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Jeff_Coatsworth
Community Expert
Community Expert
Jan 14, 2019 3:29 PM UTC

That just sounds like your file associations in Windows is messed up & it doesn't associate .fm and .book file types with FM. Easy fix.

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LinSims
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LinSimsCommunity ExpertAuthor
Community Expert
Jan 14, 2019 3:34 PM UTC

Association is set correctly. It's even set to FM 2019 although both FM 2017 and FM 2019 are offered as options.

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Legend
Jan 14, 2019 3:00 PM UTC

Do these files contain cross-references? When you open a FrameMaker file and cross-references get updated and change, the file automatically gets into an "unsaved" state.

Regarding the lck files, this would need a closer look.

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LinSims
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LinSimsCommunity ExpertAuthor
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Jan 14, 2019 3:07 PM UTC

That's a possibility. There are xrefs, and at least one of the files has unresolved references (on the list of things to fix).

And to Jeff_Coatsworth, while the files are local it is by way of a Box Sync folder, so they still need to be locked. I think. I'm not entirely certain how FMs network locking works with something like Box.

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Jeff_Coatsworth
Community Expert
Community Expert
Jan 14, 2019 2:52 PM UTC

If your FM docs are local to your machine - chances are that you're not sharing them with any other authors, so you could turn off file locks in your FM Prefs. I've noticed for a while that just opening a doc gives it a status of "want to save?" even when there have been no changes made. I use the Shift-Save all Open Files a lot before closing down.

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