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Gail Bergan
Inspiring
November 21, 2015
Question

Importing Word files into FM 2015 strips character formatting

  • November 21, 2015
  • 2 replies
  • 1331 views

‌Hi,

I'm hoping someone has a solution for me. After upgrading to FM 2015 (at great expense, I might add) I'm finding that imported MS Word  files (doesn't matter if they are 2003 or 2007 files) are getting nailed by Frame's new import dialog box. These are scientific documents, so they are filled with italics, superscripts, subscripts, and so on. No matter which options I choose in this fancy new dialog box, all this character formatting is gone. You can imagine my frustration at having to either 1) manually hunt for chemical formulas, Latin phrases, etc. and retypeset these properly, or 2) abandon FM 2015 completely and do the layout in FM 12, which preserves everything beautifully. Spending an hour with tech support was a waste of time.

Has anyone else had this problem, and if so, how did you solve it? Thanks in advance.

Gail

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    P
    Adobe Employee
    Pawan_Keshari
    Adobe Employee
    February 18, 2016

    Hi Gail,

    We were looking at the issues mentioned on this thread.

    For that we created and have attached a word file "SampleFile.docx" on which we performed few steps as mentioned below.

    1. In "FM2015_Same_As_FM12.PNG", we get the styling of Word document by just Checking On "Import Word Documnet Inline Styles and List Formats".
    2. In "FM2015_Extra.PNG", we get the features of FM Paragraph Tag and also the Inline styles present in Word doc (Follow steps as mentioned in "FM2015_Extra_Steps.PNG").
    3. For reference, we have attached the word import of same document in FM12 also in "FM12.png".

    Summarizing it, we can also map the word style paragraph to FM style paragraph and then check on the inline styles check box to get styling of Word also. This should work if file is imported in existing template also.

    If possible you can share the files at "keshari@adobe.com", we can see more on this issue to provide the best possible solution on this.

    Regards,

    Pawan Keshari

    FM Engineering Team

    G
    Gail BerganAuthor
    Inspiring
    February 24, 2016

    OK I'm sending files to the email you provided. I look forward to your response after you see them.

    Gail

    G
    Gail BerganAuthor
    Inspiring
    February 26, 2016

    Pawan:

    Can you let me know whether you received the files or not? It was kind of a big Zip file.

    Gail

    Jeff_Coatsworth
    Community Expert
    Jeff_CoatsworthCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 23, 2015

    If it was working in FM12 & now not in FM2015 (fully patched, right?) then you need to log a bug in the FM bugbase.

    G
    Gail BerganAuthor
    Inspiring
    November 23, 2015

    My version of FM is 13.0.1.385. I checked for further updates and it found none. I'll report the bug, but will also try tech support again to see if someone else might have a solution. If they do, I'll report back. Thanks Jeff.

    M
    Mike-Hardy
    Participating Frequently
    November 25, 2015

    Well, I have an update. I spent another hour or so on the phone with tech support, and he was stumped. He asked me to send him a file that he could do testing on. He emailed me the next day and said he had found a solution, so of course I got all excited.

    Unfortunately, his solution was to import the Word file by reference, not by copying into the document. I told him  that does me no good whatsoever, because I can't format it, add links, add tables, figures, etc. We tried a few more potential fixes, but in the end he admitted that I uncovered a genuine bug in Frame 2015, which they were going to log and work on for the next patch.

    The problem is, importing content from Word is critical to my work flow. I don't generate any content in FM; it's all imported through Word or graphics programs. So if this bug isn't fixed soon, I'm going to be asking for a refund, because I'll have to go back and use the old version.

    Anyway, thought you might be interested in what happened.

    Gail

    ‌


    A further alternative would be to import the Word files into FrameMaker 12. Then select all, and copy to the clipboard. Open a document in FrameMaker 2015, and paste into that document. This gives you the working import filters of FrameMaker 12, and the other benefits of using FrameMaker 2015.

    If you were feeling really brave, you could try replacing the filters in FrameMaker 2015 with those from FrameMaker 12. I don't have FrameMaker 2015, so I'm guessing a bit, but:

    1. Quit both versions of FrameMaker.
    2. Backup the maker.ini file within FrameMaker 2015 by making a copy, say as maker.ini-2015.
    3. Rename the filters subdirectory within FrameMaker 2015, say to filters-2015
    4. In the [APIClients] section of the FrameMaker 2015 maker.ini file, remove all entries that reference the filters subdirectory, and replace them with the equivalent entries from the FrameMaker 12 file. A diff of the two files will help you to see where changes are required.
    5. Copy the filters directory from FrameMaker 12 into FrameMaker 2015
    6. Restart FrameMaker 2015 and test.

    Obviously this has lots of scope for breaking things. I'd not waste too much time on this - most likely, either it will or won't work, and that's it. If it doesn't work, quit both versions of FrameMaker and back out your changes.

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