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Revert flattened chm structure (FM2019 -> FM2022)

Engaged ,
Nov 27, 2025 Nov 27, 2025

I have a huge document which consists of 4 merged documents. When creating a chm-file of this I had the 4 sub-documents at top level, and then each sub-document had its chapter at the next level.

But after upgrading FrameMaker this structure has been flattened, all of the chapters now are at top level.

How do I get back to the previous structure. which I had using FM2019?

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Community Expert ,
Nov 27, 2025 Nov 27, 2025

Need some more details - what does "a huge document which consists of 4 merged documents." look like in FM? Is it a book file with 4 .fm files in it or are you doing a "book of books" sort of structure?

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Engaged ,
Nov 27, 2025 Nov 27, 2025

It's a "Book of books".

Each "sub-book" consists of about 15 .fm files, where a .fm-file is a chapter.

It is built-up like this:

mainTOC.fm
mainCover.fm
book1\b1Cover.fm
book1\b1chapter1.fm
...
book1\b1chapter15.fm
book2\b2Cover.fm
book2\b2Chapter1.fm
...
book2\b2Chapter18.fm
book3\b3Cover.fm
book3\b3Chapter1.fm
...
book3\b3Chapter14.fm
book4\b4Cover.fm
book4\b2Chapter1.fm
...
book4\b2Chapter18.fm
mainIX.fm

Using FM2019, the produced chm-file looked like this:

Almtuna_0-1764257000994.png

Just as desired.

 

But after upgrading to FM2022, the tree structure is lost:

Almtuna_1-1764257135052.png

 

above is just a part of the first sub-book and its chapters, it continues the same way for all four sub-books.

Each cover has a title which has paragraph Cover Guide Type.

Each chapter has a title which has paragraph Heading 1.

 

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Community Expert ,
Nov 27, 2025 Nov 27, 2025

Hi,

Do you use the same sts file? Did you compare the last one with the current one?

Does the layout change., e.g. font size or indentation of headings? FrameMaker uses this info to calculate the heading level.

Best regards, Winfried

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Engaged ,
Nov 27, 2025 Nov 27, 2025

I tried to use the same sts file, and had FrameMaker 2022 upgrade it.

However, after upgrading I had to rename the FM2019 paragraph style "ChapterName" to "Heading1", otherwise the (chm) chapter names came out completely unformatted. (And this lead to moving old Heading 1 to new Heading 2, etc.)
Now everything works (and looks) just perfect when creating pdf files.
When you say FM looks at heading indentation, those were a bit damaged during the process. Something that I still have to correct. Perhaps I should do that now?

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Community Expert ,
Nov 27, 2025 Nov 27, 2025

Yes, because the Publish function doesn't know to bust things up by headings, so it uses the font size and indentation to infer what the headings are.

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Engaged ,
Nov 27, 2025 Nov 27, 2025

Do you mean font size and indentation in the TOC file, or in the chm?

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Community Expert ,
Nov 27, 2025 Nov 27, 2025
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In the .fm files actually - it wouldn't need to use "appearances" if it could just use the TOC layout as the output's TOC.

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