Expert: Wayne Johnson - 6/27/2011

Question
I have a framemaker manual that was initially produced by some writing company for my employer. it employed a lot of conditional text and other plumbing in its initial design so the manual could service several products. Since then it has gone through several novice hands before it came to me.

The problem I am having is an inability to generate the lists and update the frame 7.05 book. I am getting an "unable to open file because it uses unavailable fonts message" when the document uses only traditional arial and times new roman fonts. I have also had to go into individual chapters to repair broken cross references. I use the find function to track them down, correct them and save the file. When I try to update the manual I get broken cross reference error messages again for chapters I have already cleaned up. I did search and remove all the conditional text I could find in all the chapters. A coworker (away on a trip) was able to update if he had all chapters open when he hit the update icon. I cannot do that successfully on my windows xp machine (not sure what os on his laptop that was able to do it).

Is there something I can do to correct this or is it better to convert it all to text (or export mif and rebuild -if that won't bring the problem into the new chapters) and rebuild the book from scratch? thanks much!

Curt

Answer
Curt - I can answer the first question
Missing Fonts:
Start Framemaker, (you do not need to have a file Open).
Go to FILE - PREFERENCES - GENERAL and unselect the "REMEMBER MISSING FONTS" Check box.
This should eleminate the missing fonts problem.

If you go to the HELP file there is some good info on Cross-References - below is some info from the help file.

To resolve a cross-reference when a marker has been moved to another file or the file has been renamed:

Choose Edit > Update References.
Choose Update Unresolved Cross-References from the Commands pop-up menu.
In the Total of Unresolved Cross-References scroll list, select the file that used to contain the source of the unresolved cross-reference. The text below the scroll list indicates how many cross-references to the selected file are unresolved.
Do one of the following:
(Windows and UNIX) In the Look In scroll list, select the file that contains the source, and click Open.
(Mac OS) Click Change to File, select the file in the scroll list, and click Select.
If FrameMaker can't perform the update, select a different file in the Look In scroll list, and then try again.

To resolve cross-references to any other file listed in the Total of Unresolved Cross-References scroll list, repeat steps 3 and 4. Then click Done.

To resolve a cross-reference when a marker has been deleted:

Choose Edit > Find/Change.
Choose Unresolved Cross-Reference from the Find pop-up menu and click Find. FrameMaker finds the first unresolved cross-reference and selects it. The marker text of the last-used source marker for the cross-reference appears in the Find text box to help you locate the source.
If you no longer need the cross-reference, delete it. Otherwise, do one of the following:
If FrameMaker finds an unresolved paragraph cross-reference, double-click the cross-reference to display the Cross-Reference dialog box, specify a different source, and click Replace.
If FrameMaker finds an unresolved spot cross-reference, insert a new cross-reference marker in the appropriate text (see Inserting cross-references). Use exactly the same marker text that appears in the Find/Change dialog box.
Repeat steps 2 and 3 until all unresolved cross-references are resolved

Hope this helps you out.

Regards, Wayne