Known Participant

Question

FM2020 crashes and .fm file disappears

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
March 30, 2021
6 replies
471 views

We are using FM2020 (Version: 16.0.1.817) for a large textbook...appx 800 pages split into 16 chapter files and a shared company Dropbox folder. Some files will kick us out while working in them and give the following error:

An internal error occured while writing imported graphics in this document. The file has been saved, but has lost some image data.

It keeps occuring. The graphics in the file are almost all PDFs and do not seem to have issues. We also tried saving files as .mif and then resaving as .fm. Even stranger is that when this error occurs the .fm file disappears from Dropbox completely...very scary. The .backup remains and another file with a weird extension which can be renamed with .fm and opens up but not sure that is the best thing to do in this scenario. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.

Matt-Tech Comm Tools

Community Expert

Agreeing with Jeff, Lin, and Barb...

Dropbox gives you some nifty features, but it's better for a single user bouncing between home and office, rather than a team working on files.

As Jeff said, look to using a proper CMS instead of Dropbox.

RoboHelp always had an included CMS that worked for small teams...it would be great if FrameMaker had something similar.

-Matt

-Matt Sullivan, FrameMaker Course Creator, Author, Trainer, Consultant

Bob_Niland

Community Expert

What happens if you re-save all the files locally, and then render?

And I imagine there could be complications in doing that completely, if the referenced objects are also on some cloud somewhere.

Also, with the imported PDFs, are you importing single-page PDFs, or specified pages in multi-page PDFs? I'm wonder how robust the page-specific API is when content is cloudy.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

My 2¢:

I had the exact same issue with Dropbox and FrameMaker and now use it exactly the way Jeff described—I work locally and drag the project folder to Dropbox once or twice a day to back up the content. FWIW, I have no issues working directly on dropbox on InDesign jobs, just FrameMaker.

I was teaching a FrameMaker class last week and one student had his files on dropbox—same issue. The file we were working on was deleted. I had him move all of the lesson files to his local drive and we were good to go for the rest of the class.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

D

defaultc6c3oio908rv

Participant

yes, the problem is more frequent for me now; as I often work in several places, the cloud is a better solution than, say, a network drive; I simply switch off the synchronisation of Dropbox while working with FM, then switch it on again. That seems to me to be the easiest way. Large files on shares often lead to crashes.

Nevertheless, it is an impertinence that Dropbox is offered in the menu but is not functional. FrameMaker 2019 Release.

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

Dropbox is just a virtual shared folder storage location - the Pro version just gives you more space. It's not designed as a CMS or a version/source control system. Why did you decide on using it vs. a regular network location?

LinSims

Community Expert

I have a similar issue that @NOLA GIRL 1 has, except that FrameMaker doesn't usually crash when this happens. My company (currently) uses Box. We're using Box because we have no local network storage, and this is not going to change.

@NOLA GIRL 1, I've found that if I save the file to a different name (I usually append 2 at the end), then resave the new file over the original file, things usually straighten themselves out. The files with the weird number/letter extensions are just FM trying to save the file in a way that lets you recover from the errors; it creates a new one every time you get that error message.

We're in the midst of moving off Box and onto SharePoint cloud. I'm grimly anticipating having to relink all my referenced graphics.

pulkitn

Adobe Employee

Hey @NOLA GIRL 1 ,

It would be great if you mail to Adobe at <fmerror-reports@adobe.com> with logs (.dmp file ) present at "%appdata%\Adobe\FrameMaker\16".
Someone will get back to you at the earliest and help you get rid of any problem you are facing.

Thanks
Pulkit Nagpal
FM & FMS Engg.

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

My advice? - don't use Dropbox (for anything but backing up your files after you've worked on them - preferably locally), If you've got multiple authors, you need a proper version control system to check in/out files.

N

NOLA GIRL 1Author

Known Participant

Thanks.We do have multiple authors but only one person works on a chapter at a time? We use Dropbox Professional so I thought that was controlling versions? So do you think Dropbox is the issue here??? What other options regarding proper version control system? We are open to suggestions. Thanks again.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded