How to withdraw a wrong open and save of a structured fm file in unstructured mode?

[dragonwave]

I opened a structured fm file wrongly in unstructured mode and saved it. When I opened this fm file again in structured mode, the structure view has been blank. Does anyone no how to withdraw this?

[Gorly]

Hi,

you better have a backup of that file ready, or you're screwed.

Saving a structured document in unstructured FM flattens that file.

If you still have a working conversion table flying around, you could try to use that to restore the structure - but it will most probably not restore everything back to how it was.

-Alex

[Russ Ward]

Yes, that's right, in case you (understandably) may not want to believe it. The loss is permanent and your only hope for true restoration is a backup.

This is an incredible long shot, but if you have FM configured to make automatic backups upon save AND you only saved the "newly unstructured" version one time, the FM-generated backup will still be the original structured version. It will be named with a *.backup.fm extension.

Russ

[Lynne A. Price · Accepted solution]

Dragon,

   To expand slightly on what Alex and Russ have said, whenever you delete content from a FrameMaker document  and save the result, the deleted content is gone. It doesn't matter whether the deleted content is the element hierarchy or text and graphics in the document. A recent backup, whether a version of the file that you explicitly saved or one created by FrameMaker's automatic backup, is

   Alex mentioned that a conversion table might help recreate the document's element structure. His comment assumed that a conversion table was used somewhere in the history of this document. Whether or not that is the case, you can create a new conversion table specifically for this document. If you haven't looked at conversion tables yet, a conversion table is a FrameMaker table that describes how to use tagging in an unstructured document to create an equivalent structured document. How successfully it creates the desired structure depends very much on the nature of the tags used in the unstructured document and the desired element structure.

    --Lynne

[dragonwave]

Thank you.

[dragonwave]

When I am given some .fm files which are done by other colleagues. Can I tell if they are done in structured mode or unstructured without opening? If not, I think there is a paradox. You see, if I opened a structured file which I have no idea in unstructured FM, and accidentally saved it. It will be ruined. Right?

[Gorly]

Hi,

that is correct.

But there's a really simple workaround for it: just don't work in unstructured mode

Always work in structured.

This doesn't have any drawbacks to it (ok, there's some stuff that gets written in the MIF file, if you're using those, but even that should not really matter).

[dragonwave]

Thank you.

[dragonwave]

Thank you again.

[Bob_Niland]

Gorly: Saving a structured document in unstructured FM flattens that file.

Does it also pop a yes/no dialog warning that the operation cannot be undone? If so, in-app reversion is immediately lost.

For some wider context:
Early versions of FM only had one level of undo, as I recall.
At some point multiple-level undo was implemented.
But the undo stack is not saved in the .fm or .book file, and is lost when that file is closed in FM.

Some things (alerted by that dialog) are never undoable.
The automatic .backup.fm can also be lost in some scenarios, so needs to be renamed or otherwise preserved prior to opening a document for troubleshooting.

Being on a journaling file system provides a major safety net.

[Doriksa_Sg6135]

I opened a structured fm file wrongly in unstructured mode and saved it. When I opened this fm file again in structured mode, the structure view has been blank. Does anyone no how to withdraw this?

By @dragonwave

[Winfried Reng]

Hi,

As others had said in this thread: When you save a structured file in unstructured mode as fm file, the structure info is removed.

To get the structure info, you would have to apply the structure again with a conversion table.

Or, best, have a backup file which you can use.

Did the others comments in this thread help?

Best regards, Winfried