“couldn't update this book because it contains no openable nongenerated files”

[stephsaladino]

I need help with an error message “couldn't update this book because it contains no openable nongenerated files” when trying to create a book in Framemaker 12. Not sure what is happening but I am a new framemaker user so it could be operator error.

[FieryPantone]

A book is a set of links to for a) .fm files you've written yourself; b) files FrameMaker has helpfully generated for you. In my installation, the two sorts of content are differentiated by the colour of the icon; as you get used to FM, you'll also recognise the three-letter suffixes such as TOC.

My usual workflow is to write a few .fm files, then set up the .book file I want to include these chapters in: if you start a project with New > Book and then click on Update, you'll get the message you describe. Until you have populated the .book with some links to your own .fm files, FM has no way of knowing what you want to include in the generated files.

[JayHBar]

Hi, I've just got the same message. I'm an experienced user of Frame, and the book had 3 files in it, all of which I'd opened from the book to confirm that they worked. I then deleted all the files from the book and re-added them. Same message. What's going on?

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

You have any ToC or IX type files in this book?

[JayHBar]

No. I tried to add a ToC, and got this message.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Try opening all files in the book & then try to add the ToC – keep an eye out for any errors

[JayHBar]

Ok, I opened all the files, some of which said "Uses unavailable fonts" and I clicked OK to sub. Then the TOC generated. However, when I tried to create the PDF, again I got the message that some of the files were unopenable.

Basically it seems that the fonts are continuously changing? or something, because "unavailable fonts" seems to be the biggest issue. I open the files, click OK to substitute the fonts, and then save. Then again when I try to open the file or regenerate the TOC or PDF, the fonts are wrong.

I went to the Preferences to deselect "Remember missing font names", reopened all the files, and saved. This time the PDF generated.

Thanks for helping me isolate this problem.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

The update command does a silent open on the files, but doesn’t let you know that it ran into problems except by honking at you with that cryptic warning. Makes it tough to diagnose what’s going on.

[JayHBar]

Thanks, Jeff.

[Guest]

(I'm running FrameMaker 15, and I installed the updates on 5-31-16). However, I was getting the error before and after installing the updates. So, it was the  'Couldn't update this book...' error. We had a handful of our doc team members getting the same error and everyone was trying to fix it. Somebody came up with the quick fix, and then I kept messing around and came up with the 'Missing Fonts' and 'Missing Graphics' solution.

There's two ways that we overcame it:

1. The quick fix is to hold down the Shift key and click File > Open All Files in Book.
2. Hold down Shift and click Save all Files in Book.
3. Leave all files open, click in the left hand pane where your book files are, and then click Edit > Update Book....
4. You should no longer get the error message.

The other thing I did that fixed the problem so that you don't have to have all the files in your book open when running Edit > Update Book... was this:

Every time I opened my files, I would get a ‘Missing Fonts’ error where it was replacing Courier with Courier New and Times with Times New. I’d been ignoring it for months.

1. 1.       However, I went to TFS and downloaded the Fonts again and reinstalled them.
2. 2.       Then I googled ‘Missing Fonts’ and saw in a forum where you could turn off the ‘Missing Fonts’ error message, so I did that.
3. 3.       It’s Edit > Preferences > General, and I unchecked ‘Remember Missing Fonts’.
4. 4.       Click OK.
5. 5.       I saved all the files in my book, closed all files, and closed the book.
6. 6.       I reopened the book, opened all the files, saved them again, closed them again, and then ran Edit > Update Book…. 
7. 7.       After that, I know longer got the ‘Couldn’t find this book…’ error.

(One other thing I did, and I don’t know if it was relevant, was to search out and find all the ‘Missing graphics’ in my books and deleted the ones I wasn’t using from Voyager. Plus, I had a bunch of missing graphic icons [caution_icon_003] that were hidden behind caution icons that were visible. I just moved the caution icons aside a bit, and then deleted the grayed out boxes that were lurking in the shadows.)

Hope this helps. 🙂

Greg