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timkelly5446
Participant
February 10, 2010
Question

How to find out which documents are linked to a graphic

  • February 10, 2010
  • 4 replies
  • 1044 views

We're in the process of cleaning up our network drive by moving relevant files to a new drive and deleting duplicate or other unnecessary files. We have a lot of files and it would not be practical to do this migration in mass so we would like to do it piecemeal, deleting files as they are migrated to the new drive.

In the past, if a graphic file was used in multiple documents, we would link the documents to the graphic, wherever the graphic was first stored (which has cause many problems). Moving forward we want to keep all the graphic files with the document that uses them (even though that will create multiple copies of the same file).

My concern is that a graphic file in one folder may be linked to multiple documents and if we delete that graphic, when it comes time to migrate the other linked documents, it will be cumbersome to track down the missing graphic.

Does anyone know an easy way to identify all of the documents that are linked to a graphic? Is there a Where Used script for graphics or something?

We are using FrameMaker 8 on Windows XP Professional.

Thanks,

Tim

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    4 replies

    T
    Tigdave
    Inspiring
    February 18, 2010

    At the end of all of your books, add and generate an Index of References that includes imported graphics.

    This will give you alphabetised lists of all used graphics files. Combine the lists into one file, sort the entries (either by putting them into a table or generating an alphabetical List of Paragraphs of them). You can then delete (or move to backup) all graphics files that are not on the master list.

    The generated IOR file at the end of each book is a pretty standard authoring tool. If you need to update a graphic then you can refer to the file to see all the FM places in which it is used.

    Dave

    A
    Anonymous
    February 11, 2010

    You might consider using Bruce Foster's very-low-cost Archive utility to transition your docs from the old to the new locations. Arcguve will grab all needed graphics for each book and place them in a "new" archive location, plus change pathnames as needed, so your original graphics would still be in-place for any other docs that need them and the new "archived" files would be updated accordingly.

    http://home.comcast.net/~bruce.foster/products.htm

    A
    Anonymous
    February 11, 2010

    From the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth and films were in black and white ... you could, if so minded, save out your source files as .mif and then let grep loose on them <g>

    Arnis Gubins
    Arnis Gubins
    Inspiring
    February 10, 2010

    Any grep-like tool (search & replace) will let you find the graphics filenames imported by reference in the binary .fm files. Just use the MIF syntax for the relative path or just the filename. The output in many of these tools can be sent to a file where you can then can collate and sort the results afterwards.

    S
    susmur
    Inspiring
    February 10, 2010

    I know of a Perl script that separates used from unused graphics: http://members.shaw.ca/philip.sharman/graphix/graphix.htm

    You will also need a Perl environment.

    We've tested this script with Strawberry Perl: http://strawberryperl.com/

    It is working, but you need to map network drives. It doesn't work with UNC paths.

    HTH

    Susanne

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