How to preserve referenced images when moving project

[Ken27394707dkz1]

My client wants to move the project and images from my computer to theirs. They can access them on OneDrive but I assume they should maintain FM files on a local drive? I assume things get funky when you work from OneDrive?

The FM and book files are located here:

D:\PRESIDIO MYORDERS USER GUIDE\Framemaker User Guide\

The images are in subfolders here:

D:\PRESIDIO MYORDERS USER GUIDE\Framemaker User Guide\Images\

Can they move the files to something like:

c:\Framemaker User Guide\ to preserve the referenced images? The images were imported by copy.

[Jeff_Coatsworth · Accepted solution]

Is there going to be multiple people wanting to work on the same files at the same time? If so, they need some sort of source control system. If it's only them, then putting it on their local c:\ drive (& backing it up someplace else) would work fine. I would recommend that you keep the folder length short - funky things can happen when creating output with long path+filename lengths.
To preserve the referenced images, you should employ an archive script to bundle all the content and images into one folder location.

[Ken27394707dkz1]

Just one person on their end.

Not sure how the script idea works? Or why it is necessary? 🙂

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Sorry, missed the bit about the images being imported (not usually a best practice) - if they all live in that \Images\ folder, then bringing the whole folder structure over will preserve the links.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS · Accepted solution]

I've had no trouble working with one drive using the desktop sync app. 

If you move the entire folder structure of the Frame project over, any referenced files will stay referenced based on your folder paths. If they are referenced outside of the Frame folder, the links will become absolute. 

However, if you imported them by copy then it won't matter. The images are embedded into the frame files. This workflow can cause problems for large documents. Import by reference is a much better workflow. 

[Ken27394707dkz1]

Thanks! I am not sure why they were copied in as I prefer by reference.

But are they really embedded if I used By Reference? Most of the FM files are below 300K in size.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Easy to test - take a copy of the folder & place it some other location - then open the FM files & see if the images are still there.

[Ken27394707dkz1]

I copied the FM files to another folder and opening the largest file. It was missing all of the images. So I guess they are by reference, correct?

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Sounds like it

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

I was going by your original post: "The images were imported by copy.".

Reference is much better; in which case you would simply move your entire Frame project folder with the Image folder included. From the size you quoted, they would be referenced. 

[Ken27394707dkz1]

Sorry to have misled you!

[Winfried Reng]

Hi David,

You say that links to referenced files are absolute, when the file is not in the same folder structure as the FrameMaker file (if I understand this correctly).

However, the links to referenced files are only absolute, when the referenced files are on another drive.
When they are on the same drive, the path is relative. It does not matter, if the referenced files are e.g. in a folder somewhere else on the same drive.
When you move the FM files and you can recreate the folder structure (e.g. two folders up and then one folder down), then the path will still be relative.

You can check this, when you convert to MIF.

Best regards, Winfried