Extraction from FM not copying over correctly

Report · Nov 10, 2010

Hi, thanks for the help on my other questions!

I am new to FM, was using FM 7.2, but due to the OLE issues, am now using FM9 DEMO under XP. All the documents I am editing were created by the last person who had this position in FM 7.2.

I was asked to provide a table from a chapter of a book to an Engineer who wanted to edit the table. He didn't have FM or the full version of Adobe Acrobat, so my options were limited in how to provide this table to him. I copied and pasted the information into a Word document as formatting wasn't really important - it was the information to edit.

He came back and asked why a row that was not suposed to be included was in the table. When I looked at the FM document it wasn't there, but in the copy and paste had appeared. It is a real row with real information.

I have basically two questions:

1. Why did the information from the table paste incorrectly?

2. If there is a feature in FM to allow more than one version of a document (example: a manual that is all inclusive of information on a product, but only portions of the manual are released to customers) what is this feature called? I want to read about how to use it.

I have a few suspicions as to why this row showed up, but rather than write several likely wrong ideas, I will see what more experienced users have to say.

Thanks

Report · Nov 10, 2010

To share the table, I would have generated a PDF of the page (or deleted all but the target page from a larger PDF).

In Acrobat, you can set the options on the PDF to allow editing and cut and paste in Reader, so he could have just copied and pasted into whatever he wanted.

You could also have saved the page/file/chapter directly to RTF, which he could have opened in Word.

From the info you provided, no way of telling why the information was corrupted...

Have you applied all the FM 9 patches, so that when you do Help > About, your version is p255? If not, you should apply them.

And for your second question, sure; that's what FM's conditional text tools are for. Mark what you want to hide and then hide it... Details on how to set it up are in the Help file.

Cheers,

Art

Report · Nov 10, 2010

I would not say that the information is corrupted. As indicated further in Art's post, maybe the row was conditioned and that condition was set to hide in the Frame file. When copied and pasted into Word, the row displayed because Word does not recognize the hidden condition.

If you DO get into using conditional text in FrameMaker, note that only certain chunks of a table can be conditioned. For example, you can condition an entire row of a table but not just one cell in a row. To understand this, just remember that when the conditioned parts are hidden, the result has to be a complete table. Hiding a row results in a complete table. Hiding one cell does not, because one cannot have a table with a cell cut out of it.

Report · Nov 10, 2010

Hi,

Thanks for the help, I think this is the reason. I am reading and playing with the conditional text feature in FM9, and have not found the actual condition for this particular row, but I'm not sure what else it could be. It will probably become more clear as I get familiar with the feature.

Thanks again.

Report · Nov 10, 2010

Hi,

Thanks for the tip on PDFs, I will certanly give that a go next time I get a request.

The information was not corrupted however, as I said in the original post, it was 'a real row with real information'.

Thanks!

Report · Nov 10, 2010

I understand it was a real row with real information, but something happened to it after it left Frame, either on the clipboard or when it was pasted into Word.

So some part of the process corrupted the information...

Report · Nov 10, 2010

Erin, one way to really see what's going on in your original FM file would be to save the file as .mif, which is FM's Maker Interchange File format, and then examine the MIF using the freebie MIFBrowse utility, from:

MIFBrowser

Although MIFBrowse hasn't been updated recently it works fine with any version of FM.

If the problem row of the table has distinctive content in it then you can search through the file to find any instance of a string, or you can wade through the MIF syntax to find the table or a perhaps a nearby cell.

Then you can look at the particular row and all the cells in it, to see if there are any conditions or any other settings applied to the row.

MIF syntax can be a bit daunting, but it's the only way to see what really is going on with the problem table.

Oh -- one more possibility for how the problem row might have been hidden, I have seen situations where the text frame on a page was adjusted from the bottom up to be smaller, so that the result was one or more rows of a table were in effect hidden on the page.

Most of the time when the body page height changes FM will "flow the rows over" to the next page, but I've also seen instances where a conflict between the "keep with next", "keep with previous" settings, plus the table's settings for widow/orphan rows, can result in FM just not being able to display rows as expected.

Sheila

Report · Nov 11, 2010

Hi Sheila,

Thank you for the information, I installed the browser and loaded the file with the affected table. I was able to find the string (text) that had been exporting and all I have to do now is pick through and find the reason why it isn't visible. I see all the commands that are used to establish formatting, and it makes sense, I just have to look at it a while to find what I'm looking for.

This is a very useful tool, like using "Reveal Codes" in Word Perfect a long time ago.

Thank you!

Erin

Report · Nov 11, 2010

Hi Shelia,

You were right, there was a condition that was showing up that hid the row in the table. Thank you so much!

I don't know if I should start a new thread for this, but I'm sure someone will tell me in no uncertain terms if I should - but:

I was able to find the "Show/Hide" tab (pod) (FM 9 makes it easier to find these things) and see that there is a version of this book where some cells should show in this chapter and some that should not. I also recieved some changes for this table this morning where I need to add/delete some rows to the one version and add/delete from another.

What is the best way to proceed? Should I have this document "reveal all" the versions and make the changes to the "master" and then assign show/hide attributes? Is there a way to show just one version of the document and switch the other? Obviously right now it is showing one version, but how to get it to show the other?

I read the help, so I know the mechanics of how to view, but I would like to hear from the experince of people who have done this.

Thanks in advance for the help, I really appreciate it.

Erin

Report · Nov 11, 2010

Erin,

In general, when editing content that has conditional text, always show all before editing anything. This is to ensure that your editing is consistent when various combinations of conditions are shown or hidden.

You refer to a "master." Conceptually, there is no difference between a master book and a slave(?) book. When you hide some conditions, they remain in the files, but hidden. So, I would advise against trying to maintain a master copy along with various version copies; they are just copies of each other. You might then fall into document management hell if you were to edit a version copy and then forget to make the edit in the master copy.

My workflow is to show all, make edits, show/hide the desired conditional text, and make a PDF. Repeat for each version. The various versions of the book reside in the PDFs; the master resides in the Frame files.

Hope this helps,

Van