Passing files between FM v7 and v8

[croundstream]

Dear God Help me!!  I am on the phone with Adobe support 800 number and the guy is NOT getting this.  It is NOT THAT difficult! 

I have an opportunity to work for someone who has FrameMaker version 7.  I have the ability to purchase FM version 8.  IF I do this and create products for him.  Is he going to have any problems reading or editing the files?   Is there going to be anything lost in the transfer???  Simple questions to me.  Maybe I am crazy in asking this!?

Thank you for ANY assistance!  I had to hang up on the guy!!!!  If I need to Call Adobe back WHERE would I call!!!

[MichaelKazlow · Accepted solution]

You can always transfer Frame 8 files to Frame 7 using Save as MIF. This will work for earlier versions as well. However, if you use any of the newere features it obviously won't work that well. The biggest issue you might have is unicode. To be honest the only seamless workflow will be for you both to use the same version.

Mike

[Arnis Gubins]

As Mike says, with FM 8, there is the ability to save FM files explicitly to a FM 7.0 MIF format but you have to make certain that you don't use any of the newer features, so it's possible to do what you want but it may not be completely transparent.

Speaking of new, Adobe is only currently selling FM9, so where are you looking at getting the FM8 version? For your own protection ensure that this is a legitimate version and that you're getting a proper transfer of the license.  See the info here for more details on proper license transfer:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/152/tn_15281.html

[Guest]

I had the exact same scenario. You will have to save every file as a FM7 file. If there was any loss of functionality by the customer we couldn't detect it. The worst thing was that there seemed to be no way of batch saving! Each file had to be opened and the Save as... command used. Very frustrating as there were lots of them. I was very glad when the customer decided to upgrade.

When the customer sends you a FM7 file there is no issue opening it but FM will naturally want to save it as a FM8 file again.

Hope this helps.

Stu