Missing headers and page numbers in FM 8

[Brad Simmons]

Dear Frame Users,

I am a long-time user of FrameMaker who has recently been plagued with a problem that I've never encountered before: When I make .PDFs, I usually have swaths of pages with some headers and some page numbers missing.

I am using unstructured FrameMaker 8 on a Windows XP platform to create books that are usually more than 300 pages. When I go to print a book, I first open up all of my chapters. Then I choose "File_Print Book" (I never do "Save As PDF"). I print directly to .PDF, without making a separate Distiller (.prn) file.

Beginning a few weeks ago, the .PDFs that were created had some headers and page numbers missing. Usually, these missing headers and page numbers were on consecutive pages - as an example, pages 20-40 would have missing page numbers. I would then reattempt the creation of a .PDF oh, two, three or sometimes four times, with the result that the exact same headers or page numbers would be missing. The ironic thing is that these headers and page numbers would appear as normal in the original FM files.

Fortunately, I have managed to get a successful .PDF created with all headers and page numbers after my fourth, fifth or sixth try. But this has changed a relatively quick process into an irritating process that takes much, much longer. 

Worse, the missing page numbers and header problem is appearing across numerous files, in numerous books. And this problem has appeared out of nowhere - It's as if one day I did not have disappearing headers and page numbers, and the next day I did.

Hence I'm wondering: Why is this happening? And does anyone know how I could fix this problem?

I described this problem one friend of mine who told me to re-create and reassemble my book file from scratch. I did that, to no effect. This same friend suggested that I first make a .prn file, but I have never seen the value in taking this extra step - and when I tried this longer route to PDF creation, it too didn't solve the problem. I also went to Adobe's website and found several patches for FM 8. I downloaded those, and these did not help either. 

So now I'm grasping at straws - I'm increasing the amount of RAM in my PC from 2 GB to 4 GB, just in case this .PDF creation woes have been caused by a lack of memory. About the only other thing I could do would be to upgrade from FM 8 to FM 9 but I don't know if that would solve the problem either. Since I don't know the cause, of the problem I cannot guess at the solution.

Does anyone else have other ideas to fix this?

Brad Simmons
Technical Writer
Ag-Leader Technology
Ames, Iowa