How to open an old .book/ .doc file(s) and create PDF?

[dks11]

Hi team,

I seek your help and would like to know if you have a suggestion/ solution for the situation stated below −

Situation

Our development team received some files. These files seem to comprise of two sets of files and one .derive file. The sets seem to contain one .book and some .doc files each. The .doc files indicate that they are Microsoft 97-2003 documents.

What I did

• · I tried to open the .book file with FrameMaker 8.0 or 6.0 and received an error message stating "Although <pathToBookFile>\abc.book appears to be a FrameMaker document, it can't be opened with this release of the product."

• · I tried to open the .doc file by using a text editor like MS Word97/ notepad and it displayed <MakerFile 1.03> in the File Conversion dialog box
• Saved .doc file as .fm and tried to import into/ create a new book
• Attempted to convert the .doc files by using an online conversion utility
• Opened by using HTMLDOC and DOXYGEN tools – displays BAD HEADER message

What is required

The files need to be converted to a readable format, preferably two separate PDFs.

My questions

·         Are these FrameMaker files? Or do you suggest that they have been created by using some software other than Adobe FM?

·         If these are FrameMaker files – what version could they be (in view of the <MakerFile 1.03> tag)? is there a possibility that the files need a version older than Adobe FM6.0 to be opened?

·         How can I create a readable format (preferably PDFs) from the .book and .doc files?

Please let me know any information that you may need.

Thanks!

[Arnis Gubins]

If the .doc files actually have <MakerFile 1.03> at the start, then they're from the first release of FM. Check the book file in a text editor, to see if it has a corresponding <BookFile 1.03> in the first 16-bytes.

These are very old files and hopefully without any corruption.

You could try using FM's "heroic open" to see if anything can be recovered from these.

First open/create a blank document.

Next type <esc> o H to trigger the "heroic" open. It display a standard file open window, but this skips a lot of error checking and tries to pull whatever pieces it understands out of the file.

You should then immediately save as MIF and then exit FM, so as to not leave it in a potentially unstable state.

You can then open the MIF file in FM to see what's been recovered.