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Stewart00
Stewart00
Participant
May 22, 2019
Answered

graphics grouping issue

  • May 22, 2019
  • 3 replies
  • 800 views

I am a long-time user of FM and recently upgraded to the 2019 Version. I am having several problems with editing graphics.

1) When I use the mouse to draw a box around graphic elements, some elements cannot be selected, even though they are not grouped with anything else. They can be selected individually by clicking on the element. This makes it difficult to select a group of similar elements.

2) I have a page with no text frames and a master page with no frames at all. I used Select all on Page to select all the graphic elements on that page. I then used Group to group them together. The grouped object is wider and taller than the collection of objects selected. In other words, additional white space to the left and above the group was included all the way to the left and top edges of the page. This space interferes with the align function (it aligns the white space) and the scale function (scaling includes the extra space). The upshot is graphics are almost uneditable.

Can anyone help? I did this all the time with my older version of FM and never had a problem.

Thank you.

-Stewart

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Stewart00

Hi.

First, thanks to all who have replied.  I truly appreciate your willingness to assist me.  To answer a few questions, I am using the latest version of FrameMaker 2019 with all recent updates/patches applied.  I'm running Windows 7 with an updated operating system, including .NET 4.7.2.  After selecting all on page and grouping (with the odd grouping result), I tried moving that selection completely onto the page by shrinking it and centering.  After doing so, I could find no hidden or "off the page" objects or text frames.  That's not to say that they were not there, but only that I could not find them using my own ideas or the ideas set forth in your replies.

I resolved the problem by copying the graphic elements to a clean, new FrameMaker 2019 document.  In that new document, the selection and grouping actions all behave as expected.

I believe that the problem must have been caused by the fact that I was working on a document that originally was created (long ago) in FrameMaker version 6.0.  Yes, that's pretty old, and you can get up off the floor and stop laughing now.  :-)  Hey, it was working, so I saw no reason to upgrade at the time.

Anyway, my experience may point out a problem with the conversion of older FrameMaker documents into the new version.  Something got corrupted in the translation.  These sorts of problems did not, and do not, happen when I open that old document in my old version of FrameMaker.  I verified that the old version works just fine on the original document, in terms of graphics element selection and grouping.

If someone wanted to investigate this problem in more detail, I could provide you with a test file, but I don't see a way to attach a file to this message.

Thanks again.  I now know that I need to start from scratch when updating my old documents, rather than having them translated into the new version.  That translation appears to work initially, but something is getting corrupted which leads to editing problems.

Cheers,

-Stewart

3 replies

Stewart00
Stewart00AuthorCorrect answer
Participant
May 22, 2019

Hi.

First, thanks to all who have replied.  I truly appreciate your willingness to assist me.  To answer a few questions, I am using the latest version of FrameMaker 2019 with all recent updates/patches applied.  I'm running Windows 7 with an updated operating system, including .NET 4.7.2.  After selecting all on page and grouping (with the odd grouping result), I tried moving that selection completely onto the page by shrinking it and centering.  After doing so, I could find no hidden or "off the page" objects or text frames.  That's not to say that they were not there, but only that I could not find them using my own ideas or the ideas set forth in your replies.

I resolved the problem by copying the graphic elements to a clean, new FrameMaker 2019 document.  In that new document, the selection and grouping actions all behave as expected.

I believe that the problem must have been caused by the fact that I was working on a document that originally was created (long ago) in FrameMaker version 6.0.  Yes, that's pretty old, and you can get up off the floor and stop laughing now.  :-)  Hey, it was working, so I saw no reason to upgrade at the time.

Anyway, my experience may point out a problem with the conversion of older FrameMaker documents into the new version.  Something got corrupted in the translation.  These sorts of problems did not, and do not, happen when I open that old document in my old version of FrameMaker.  I verified that the old version works just fine on the original document, in terms of graphics element selection and grouping.

If someone wanted to investigate this problem in more detail, I could provide you with a test file, but I don't see a way to attach a file to this message.

Thanks again.  I now know that I need to start from scratch when updating my old documents, rather than having them translated into the new version.  That translation appears to work initially, but something is getting corrupted which leads to editing problems.

Cheers,

-Stewart

Jeff_Coatsworth
Community Expert
Jeff_CoatsworthCommunity Expert
Community Expert
May 22, 2019

If your source is FM6, that's pre-Unicode, so I would expect some issues to happen with fonts. Maybe you should try saving as MIF in FM6 and opening that it FM2019 to see if it behaves better.

Stewart00
Stewart00Author
Participant
May 22, 2019

If your source is FM6, that's pre-Unicode, so I would expect some issues to happen with fonts. Maybe you should try saving as MIF in FM6 and opening that it FM2019 to see if it behaves better.Hi.

Hi.

That's a great idea.  Thanks for that.  However, it was not the problem.  I created a test file with just one page that had the problem.  It continues to have the problem when directly translated from FM6 to FM2019.  When saved as a MIF from FM6 and the MIF is opened in FM2019, the problem is still there.  So, great idea, but that wasn't the source of the issue.

I appreciate the help.

-Stewart

Barb Binder
Community Expert
Barb BinderCommunity Expert
Community Expert
May 22, 2019

Hi Stewart:

The grouped object is wider and taller than the collection of objects selected. In other words, additional white space to the left and above the group was included all the way to the left and top edges of the page.

I also think this indicates invisible frame or frames. If you want to share the page I'd be happy to look at it, but before you do that you might try (save first so that you can revert):

  1. Select all and add a stroke and fill to see if you can find the extra frame and/or
  2. Hold Alt/Shift and tap the arrow keys to move the object back in to view.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training
Jeff_Coatsworth
Community Expert
Jeff_CoatsworthCommunity Expert
Community Expert
May 22, 2019

Have you applied all the latest patches?

W
Community Expert
Winfried RengCommunity Expert
Community Expert
May 22, 2019

When you ungroup all objects on this page and try to select everything in the area outside of your visible objects. Is there anything? Possibly empty text frames or text lines? Can you delete everything outside of your visible objects?

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