Word to FrameMaker - Is there a way to update missing files (graphics) on a global (book) level?

Jim,

One tip when looking at the path names in the RTF. The backslashes are
escaped with another backslash, so you'll see lots of backslashes
there and the file name is enclosed in double quotes, e.g.
"C:\\\\Graphics\\\\PNG\\\\my_picture.png"

If the graphics in the Word file are linked, then FM imports the
graphic by reference, i.e. it preserves the external link. This really
is the best way to do it. Otherwise embedded graphics tend to muck up
the import filters and you would stand a very good chance of having
quite a number of your Word imports fail. The usual recommendation is
to strip out the graphics in Word first. Have you seen the Adobe
tutorial on importing Word documents by Matt Sullivan? There are some
tips and best practices in there. It's located at
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/framemaker/articles/word_conversion.html
Also have a look at Tim Murray's Word-to-Frame conversion paper at
http://www.techknowledgecorp.com/public/word2frame.pdf

If the Word files are "clean", i.e. the creators used styles and
didn't do any overrides, then you should be ok. However, if all you
have is a mixture of Normal and a few Heading styles, then you're in
for a tough slog.

As long as the Graphics folder is on the same drive as the FM folders,
then everything should get referenced relatively in the FM files. In
older versions of FM, if a reference traversed the root of a drive,
then the references would be made absolute.

Jim,

If the graphics were imported as links in Word and then all of the
files moved, wouldn't it be easier to fix this at the Word end first?

If you save the Word files as RTF (Word doesn't complain about broken
links), then in the RTF you can find all of the linked graphics (look
for the INCLUDEPICTURE keyword) and change the path there using a
system level search&replace tool. Then when the files are imported
into FM (it can take the RTFs directly), FM won't have anything to
complain about.

You can either script a Word macro to do batch through a folder of
Word docs and save them as RTF or look for a stand-alone utility to do
this.

This is probably a lot easier and faster if you're not familiar with
FM scripting or programming tools.

Jim,

This could probably be done more easily from FrameScript than the FDK.

Though I still don't follow where the missing graphics are arising
from if you're just importing Word files - unless you're saving to a
different location that messes up any graphics (by reference) already
in the template.

No problems with zip at this end.