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Question

Using same document multiple times in a book

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
June 5, 2018
3 replies
1538 views

I am using unstructured FrameMaker 13 to create machine user manuals. The machines have units that are used multiple times throughout the machine in different sections. We organize our FrameMaker book manuals the same way our machines are organized, so we have a section for each machine section with the documents that cover the units in each section. Some unit documents must be present in more than one section of the book as shown below:

Machine Section 100

Unit A document

Unit B document

Unit C document

Unit D document

Machine Section 200

Unit A document

Unit G document

Unit C document

Unit X document

Unit F document

Unit G document

The problem is FrameMaker doesn't let me import the same document twice into the book, so I can't list the documents I want in each section as shown above. To get around this, we developed a separate book section for these documents and removed them from the machine sections. We direct our readers to this separate book section to find the documents missing from the machine section they are looking at. This is confusing for our readers and annoying for us.

1. How could we fix this issue in unstructured Frame?

2. Would this issue be eliminated if we migrated to structured Frame?

This topic has been closed for replies.

B

bluegiraffe24Author

Known Participant

I am testing this and I am trying to number my chapters within each book. It works but then when I click away to another book, some of the chapter numbers change in the book I just did. It seems like a glitch or is something else going on? I am just going into the numbering properties and setting Chapter # 1 and then Continue Numbering From Previous Chapter in Book for the other chapters in that book.

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

So have you created a master book and then treated each Machine Section xxx as sub-book? If so, then all you need to open is the master, set the numbering properties on the first doc or book to start at 1 (or whatever scheme you want to use), then select all remaining sub-books and set the numbering to Continue Numbering From Previous, then Update.

B

bluegiraffe24Author

Known Participant

Yes. I want each chapter within each sub-book to be numbered, so I was opening the first sub-book and numbering from 1-however many docs and then opening the second sub-book and numbering where the last one left off and onward. The problem is when I was done numbering chapters, the chapter numbers didn't stay what they should be, they started showing up as other random numbers. I numbered the chapters in the first sub-book from 1-4 and then clicked to the second sub-book and numbered those chapters. Then when I clicked back to the first sub-book, the chapter numbers were 1, 7, 3, 4 or some other combination. I've had this happen before and usually just renumbering works, but in this case the numbering isn't sticking for any of the sub-books.

Bob_Niland

Community Expert

re: ...units that are used multiple times throughout the machine in different sections.

How are you incorporating these re-used entities?

re: FrameMaker doesn't let me import the same document twice into the book

A casual test suggests that there is no such limitation on Text Insets (File > Import > File of other .fm files).

Klaus Göbel

Legend

We have developed a concept to realise that. Several customers are using it yet.

We are working with lots of modules, that are imported via textinsets.

But that's to complex to explain that in a few sentences.

One suggestion:

Use DocumentA and DocumentB. In both documents you just only have the same textinset (DocumentC)

So both Documents have the same content (DocumentC).

So the only document you have to edit is DocumentC.

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

Why not just make each Machine Section xxx into a book? Then you can use the master book-of-books concept to build a container for all the sub-book files.

Matt-Tech Comm Tools

Community Expert

I agree with Jeff.

Also, you might consider text insets or conditional text as ways to blend your content into a more cohesive document.

Migration to structure would be beneficial for many things, but overkill for resolving this specific issue.

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

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