Embedded images corrupted when updating to FM 2019

[Deb Sauer]

Hi all,

I'm converting a bunch of files from FM 8 to FM 2019. When I open the FM 8 files in FM 2019, the images that were imported and copied into the FM 8 files are corrupted and appear as gray boxes in FM 2019. I don't have the source image files to import by reference into FM 2019, so I really need the images to survive the conversion to FM 8. Any suggestions? (PS The images that were imported by reference are fine, of course. The paths are retained.)

Thanks!

[frameexpert]

The only suggestion I have would be to run a script in FrameMaker 8 to export the images from FrameMaker to disk. You would have to use FrameScript, since ExtendScript wasn't added to FrameMaker until version 10. Then you could use a script to import the images back into the FrameMaker 2019 documents, preferably by reference.

One other thing you might try: save the FrameMaker 8 files to MIF and then open the resulting MIF files with FrameMaker 2019. I am not sure this will make a difference, but it is worth a try.

If you want to explore the scripting solution, please contact me offlist: rick at frameexpert dot com

[Bob_Niland]

If you still have FM8 available (or any later version that opens the files without damage), Rick's MIF solution is worth a try.

If nothing else works (been there, done that), and PDFs of the documents exist, the images can {usually} be recovered, in their as-published state, from PDF by various means, such as export-images in Acrobat Pro, or deconstruction page-by-page in Illustrator (where you need to capture callouts & such).

For people who haven't been bitten by this (usually by their forebears), there are of course a couple of stewardship lessons:

1. Never embed images. Use import-by-reference, and include some (perhaps author-only) metadata on what each image is and where sourced from. If managment insists on embed, create a local ./images/ dir and put local copies there.
2. When tying the ribbon at project release, always re-save each .fm and .book file as .MIF. You never know what version (perhaps at outside translation) will try to open them.

[Deb Sauer · Accepted solution]

Thanks, Rick and Bob. I appreciate the speedy replies. I didn't open the files again for a few days and, oddly enough, when I did, the missing images were there! I don't know if this was a memory caching issue or what. I'm converting about 50 books for this client, so I may run into this issue again and your recovery tips may come in handy.

FWIW, I never embed images; I always import by reference (it's been a best practice since I started using FM in 1994). I have some previous tech writer at this client to thank for this and a lot of other bad practices. Cleaning it up keeps me pretty busy!