Need to update document, but lost the FrameMaker source files

[remydg]

I have made a book some time ago and I have now to edit it because of mistypeS, but i lost the original FrameMaker book, and I only have the PDF...

I tried your methods but most of the vectorial draws, logo and some paragraphs are not imported and I have a lot of blanks (the pages number is doubled) pages at some places.

(I am not so sure that I originally did it with frame maker)

[Barb Binder]

Hi remydg:

You are adding to a thread from 9 years ago—I'm going to branch this to a new thread so that we can address your questions with information that is pertinent to the software in 2018.

~Barb

[Barb Binder]

(I am not so sure that I originally did it with frame maker)

Open the PDF in Acrobat or Reader and choose File > Properties > Description. Next to the metadata field called Application, you can see the program that was used to create the file that was converted to a PDF.

Adobe Acrobat can still be used to export data to RTF and it does a better job than it did in 2009 (as per the original thread). In Acrobat DC, use File > Export to > Rich Text Format (and experiment with the Word exports as well). I use this technique to extract data from a PDF when the source file is lost, but the resulting files will always require clean-up either in Word or in FrameMaker before they are usable. Note that you can use the same menu to extract just the images as well.

The lesson here is to remember to always archive the source documents with the PDFs so that you don't have to go through this step in the future.

~Barb

[Bob_Niland]

Depending on PDF permissions, you can also extract content in Illustrator, by opening and deconstructing the hosting page around the object of desire.

I used to do that a lot when crafting presentations for major account clients. I'd snag their vector logo from their annual report. I've also had to do it when recovering documents that existed only as PDF (and not all originally FM). In some cases it was ratty paper original only, scanned to PDF at high res, and with OCR.

PDF was never intended to be an editable master format. It was really more just a device-independent Postscript. Since the internal format is now more or less open, various factions are trying to promote it to interchange status, but the more they add to it to support that, the higher the risk that it won't open in older readers/interpreters not keeping up with the feature creep rat race.

And don't just keep the .fm with the master .pdf. If not using a CMS, also keep an archive subdir for capturing old revisions. Stewardship matters. If the work isn't saved/snapshotted, someone will eventually get to completely re-do it, and that might be you.