Book and File Conditional Text Tags Don't Match

[director-jn]

In Framemaker 10 (TCS 3, Windows 7 64-bit), when I click on a document in a the book (& View>Show/Hide Conditional Text), an extra conditional text tag shows up that doesn't exist in the document Show/Hide Conditional Text.

For example:

1. In the book, My Book.book, I select Chapter1.fm (but don't open it).
2. Then I open the Show/Hide Conditional Text panel (View>Show/Hide Conditional Text)
3. I see these two condition tags, Hide Text and HideText. I use Hide Text but not HideText.
   • Apparently, at some point I changed the name of the condition tag.
4. Then I open Chapter1.fm.
5. When I open the Show/Hide Conditional Text panel, HideText isn't there.

What I want to do is to delete HideText (the one I don't use), but I can't find ourt how to do it. any ideas out there?

One more bit of information that might help figure out what's going on:

1. I select Chapter1.fm in the book.
2. Then I select Show as per condition in the Show/hide Conditional Text panel.
3. Select HideText in the Hide field.
4. Click the left arrow (<--) to move HideText to the Show field.
5. Click Apply.
6. I get this error message in the Book Error Log:

• Cannot show the following tags because they do not exist in this document

So, can anyone tell me how to get rid of HideText from the book files?

Thanks!

John N.

[AxialInfo]

John, some troubleshooting questions:

1. did all of the file(s) originate from FM10 or were any from previous versions? Did you import previous version content? Slight naming differences between FM versions is an insidious problem that many of us here can relate to ... If any of the files were from previous versions, I would start with testing FM10 original content itself, to see what naming convention FM10 starts with.

2. if you want to dive into the innards of your problem files, you might use the venerable MIFBrowser, a freebie from

http://www.wideman-one.com/gw/tech/framemaker/mifbrowse.htm

Although it hasn't been updated in a loooooong time, it should still work perfectly with FM10 MIF files.  It's just a viewer, not an editor, but it will help you get a handle on both the conditional tags in-situ, in comparison to the tag as defined in the condition catalog section.

MIF is a bit daunting if you've never looked at it, but with MIFBrowse the various sections of content are more easily viewable.

3. With copies of your FM files safely backed up you could then edit the conditions in the.MIF files in a text editor (or by using FM itself, although this takes some special care to ensure that the file remains as text. I personally fine text editors (e.g. NotepadPlus or EmEditor) easier to use because viewing line numbers helps when trying to sync between what you see in the MIFBrowse display vs. actually edit the content.

4. It's also possible to save the .book file as .mif to then examine/edit the conditional tag catalog with a text editor. You could copy the "missing" conditional definition from one of the chapters into the .book file.

Sheila

[Arnis Gubins]

John,

It's often quite a bit easier to just delete a wonky book file and then create a new one. Shouldn't take more than a minute or so.

[Van Kurtz · Accepted solution]

John,

With only the book file open, even though one of its documents is selected, the show/hide box lists all the conditions in the book. The error message is telling you that the selected document does not have that tag. So, either some other document in the book has the tag or as you think you changed the name in the past and it is still in the book file.

So first, I would follow Sheila's suggestiong #4. Save the BOOK file as mif. Open the mif file with a text editor. Look for the following sequence of lines:

<ConditionCatalog

.

.

.

> # end of ConditionCatalog

Delete these lines and save the file. Now open the mif file in FrameMaker and save it as a FrameMaker book (in the save dialog, be sure to delete the string ".mif" at the end of the file name or Frame will complain). Update the book. FrameMaker will then create a new condition catalog in the book based upon all the conditions in the book's files.

If the condition is still there, then you will have to find the document that still contains it. You can use the Find function to find conditional text with just that condition.

Van

[director-jn]

Thanks Van. That's just the kind of fix I was looking for, and it had the added bonus of working.

Unfortuantely, I apparently corrupted a .fm file in my earlier attempts to fix (when I tried change Show/Hide Conditional Text settings, it would crash FrameMaker). But fortunately, I had an earlier version of the whole book in another separate folder, and only made a few edits since that version.

Now, onward and upward ...