Skip to main content
Participant
May 11, 2017
Question

FM12 suddenly opening multiple docs in a book in different windows instead of tabs

  • May 11, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 694 views

In unstructured Framemaker 12, when we select all of the documents in a specific book, they used to all open as tabs of the same Window. Most of the are now opening in individual windows apart from the last five or six which appear as tabs in a single window.

Nothing was changed in the book document or the files themselves. And this only occurs with one book.

Any thoughts?

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Participant
May 15, 2017

Thanks, Matt. The preferences are fine. I'm not sure what difference changing the prefs directory will make as this only affects one book file. The rest all operate as expected.

Matt-Tech Comm Tools
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 12, 2017

Neil, look at your preferences first. Fm 2017 has an Open Documents as Tabs option, and you should have something similar in Fm 12.

If that doesn't help, try renaming the prefs directory (the 12 directory in your Roaming directory)

(for example, C:\Users\Matt\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\FrameMaker\12)

and then restart FrameMaker. If you need any of the resources (like Workspaces) you can retrieve them from the renamed 12 directory.

LMK if that helps.

-Matt Sullivan, FrameMaker Course Creator, Author, Trainer, Consultant
Barb Binder
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 16, 2017

Hi Neil:

I don't have 12 installed anymore—although I have a student in class tomorrow who does, so I can take a look at her prefs. But as Matt said, I think there is a control in Edit > Preferences > Interface. You won't have all of these (this shot is from 2015), but you will at least have a few of them—start with making sure Open Documents as Tabs is checked.

That said, when you have floating windows, the fix is easy: Click the Arrange Documents button on the Application Bar (two squares to the right of the Help menu) and pick the first button in the menu (it's the blue button below). This consolidates all floating windows back to the tabbed interface.

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training
Participant
May 16, 2017

Hey Barb - many thanks for this. Although I think my initial description of the issue may have been a bit loose. Rectifying it, isn't really the problem. I'm trying to understand why it happens.

So. We have a book file with, say, 20 chapters. All of these chapters used to open in the same window as standard, but suddenly we found that chapters 1-13 wanted to open in a new window each although chapters 14-20 still opened in a single window.

So, it can't be a global preference or a book preference. It must be something at the document level. I was wondering if anyone knew what was causing it, because even though it only takes a couple of clicks to sort it, it's still a pain.

Cheers again

Neil