Is it possible to export a FM file without including all of the conditional text?

[Steve Rickaby]

At 16:17 -0700 5/12/11, Laura Larson wrote:

>My customer asked to have a word copy of one of the manuals.

My researches here indicate that this can be achieved by concealing the conditional text you don't want in the output, then saving as 'text only'. The bummer here though is that you will lose all formatting. (I have this save option in FrameMaker v 7 for Mac, but you might not.). As you have discovered, RTF export exports the concealed conditional text also.

...but I took a step backwards when I read the above. It might spare you a lot of woe if you tried to find out (quietly, if necessary) just *why* they your customer wants a Word copy of your work? It betokens a substantial lack of understanding of the difference between FrameMaker and Word.

I am reminded of a job I did a decade or so ago for an aerospace company. I ran a load of designs past them, but the response came back 'We'd like it in A4 and Word please'. When I tentatively enquired as to the reason for the latter (the former being inexplicable), it was 'so that our engineers can maintain the manuals'. I sighed and proceeded to create ten very complex user, maintenance  and programming guides, in Word (in the process of which I discovered a whole new,fascinating and previously unknown Word bug, but that's another story).

Whether their engineers succeeded in 'maintaining' the manuals I don't know, but I doubt it, as it required a very in-depth understanding of Word.

Forgive me for rambling on.

-- 
Steve