Problems Accessing Dialog Boxes During Printing/Publishing

[davidcfrye]

I'm having an intermittent issue with dialog boxes during printing/publishing.

The first instance of this was while I was using Print Book, Adobe PDF as the Printer, and the Print Book As: Separate Print Job for Each Document checked. It got through some of the files before it seemed to just stop. After playing around for a minute, I realized that the dialog box to Save As was present, but not visible anywhere that I could get to it. In Windows 10, I can hover over the active app icon for Frame in the toolbar and actually see it. I just can't GET to it. I've tried everything I can think of: Alt+Tab, hover and click on the preview, clear the desktop and select, and even dancing a little manic jig in an act of propitiatory magic. I was forced to end task through the Task Manager. On 2 subsequent attempts, I had variations on this that I was able to resolve seemingly randomly. Once I was able to clear desktop and then select from the app preview window. The other time the gods entered me and the issue was resolved by some mystical arrangement of keystrokes.

I've had a similar but different issue, where I've been Saving as PDF and gotten to the Saving... dialog with the color progress bar. The bar is full, but the process doesn't get to the "post processing" stage. There's no way to close the window or file and no cancel button.

Has anyone experienced these issues or know of solutions/workarounds? We publish a LOT of PDFs out very, very large books and we're coming up on a set of major deadlines. I can't let us get deadended because of some inscrutable print error.

[Hezy A]

I can only add that this happens to me to.

Could it be a bug?

Saving as a book works OK.

The issue is only with individual files.

[Winfried Reng · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Sometimes FrameMaker hides dialog boxes behind the windows of other applications.

Just minimize all other active applications. Then at some point the FrameMaker dialog box will show.

I enounter this sometimes when FrameMaker updates a book. However, it could also be that this occurs when FrameMaker saves as PDF.

Yes. This is a bug in FrameMaker 2019, and I hope this will be fixed in the next update.

https://tracker.adobe.com/#/view/FRMAKER-7013

Best regards

Winfried

[davidcfrye]

In my case, it's not just that it's hiding behind another app window. I click the clear desktop button (bottom right on the quickbar) to minimize all apps. Then going back to Frame to see its windows. All dialogs SHOULD show when you hover over the active app icons on the toolbar to view the preview. They're not showing up there. I can sometimes see them for a brief, shining moment as Frame pops back up when I click on the button, but they quickly disappear behind frame and I can't find any way to get to them.

I have the greatest number of issues when I'm printing books as individual files. I've done some more experimenting and the worst of the errors occurs when I do that, but also try to navigate to other windows/apps while I'm waiting on printing.

[Winfried Reng]

Hi David,

I forgot to ask: Which FrameMaker version do you have?

The current FrameMaker 2019 version is: 15.0.4.751.

If you do not have the current version, please update.

Does the printing work, when you open all files of the book before you start printing?

Do you see any dialog box, when you press ALT+TAB?

Is there any difference, when you really minimize all other applications and do not just show the desktop and bring FrameMaker to the front again?

Best regards

Winfried

[davidcfrye]

Yes, I have the most current version. As I stated in my original post, I have tried Alt+Tab and a number of permutations, including minimizing one by one. I'm not sure what you mean by oening all of the files in the book before printing. There are 178 in one book alone and 72 in another. I've found that having that many files open in Frame at once leads to instability and crashes.

[Winfried Reng]

Hi David,

What I meant with opening all files of the book is just what it says: Go to the book file and open all files, e.g. press SHIFT while you click File | Open All Files in Book.

Sometimes there are messages that images are missing or cross-references not resolved because FrameMaker cannot open a file when you do not accept such a message for another file.

Do you have the files on the network? Or are they local? Possibly you can try that.

Or hide all graphics (View | Hide Graphics).

Printing the book in a single PostScript file or PDF and Save As PDF do work?

Best regards

Winfried

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

You don't happen to work on multiple monitors do you? There sometimes was an issue with dialogs that FM put on the "other" monitor even though it was being run on only one monitor.

[davidcfrye]

I see that my thread has been marked with a Correct Answer. I didn't mark it, and the answer marked isn't quite the solution/answer to my issue. How did it get marked and how do I unmark it?

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Oh, I probably did - it looked like the "most correct" answer you were going to get.

With this new forum software, there's no "helpful" indicator anymore & so you can have multiple "correct" answers.

Currently OP's can't mark answers correct - only moderators (silly as that seems). It will probably be fixed sometime this fall.