Documents from previous versions of FM

[RBKearnsJr]

Hello all,

I've recently stepped into a role where I will be doing the customer facing and technical documentation for our company.  I am by trade a Business Analyst and have up to this point always used Word and other MS Office tools to create documentation.  I have so far only had to modify existing FM documents and it has not bee too difficult.

I would doubt there will be any training $ in the budget, so I am left to use resources such and this forum in order to learn.  This no doubt, will be challenging at times.

Questions like:

"Structured" vs. "unstructured"?

Anything required when working on documents created using previous versions (I've v 12 and many if not all of our legacy documents were created in 9 or 10).

More to come I'm sure.

Many thanks in advance.

[Bob_Niland]

Odds are you've inherited unstructured documents. If they are structured, it sound like the document architect has departed, and you could have a big problem.

Any newer version of FM can open the .fm or .mif of any older version. Due to Unicode, content changes may be expected if the older version is FM7.2 or earlier. Dialogs may pop if the older is earlier than 5.5. In your case, it should be trouble-free.

If your FM12 works need to be openable in 9 or 10:
1. don't use any features added since then, and
2. save as MIF to share with those versions

[Jeff_Coatsworth · Accepted solution]

Pick up a copy of Matt R. Sullivan's latest FM reference book - it will help you navigate FM much clearer than stumbling about on your own.

[RBKearnsJr]

Hi Jeff,

What is the name (or ISBN) for this book?  I see two on Amazon.

regards

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Check out this page - the newest one came out in 2015 - FrameMaker reference book

[Barb Binder]

Another alternative is to take a class on FrameMaker (says the FM trainer)!