[Framers] devolution: Framemaker to Word

Mon Jan 30 12:00:14 PST 2017

I would agree wholeheartedly with the advice to **AVOID** Word's Master Document feature at all cost, whatever version of Word you're using. It's never done anything but crash and ruin documents for me.

My most recent experience with large Word docs isn't good either (400+ page manuals). I ended up having to reformat an entire manual from scratch because I hit some internal limit that would allow me to open the doc, but crashed every time I tried to save additional edits. This experience helped management see the value in moving to Frame ;-)

I am currently having to use to Word 2010 for a Service Manual (I keep working on moving the Copenhagen Service team to Frame...). I find that no matter how careful I am in setting up proper styles for numbered headings and numbered or bulleted lists, Word still - on a whim - "forgets" its settings so you have to redo them time and again.

The entire company - at all sites - are about to be upgraded to the 365 version of Office 2016. Cross your fingers my Service Manual comes through it okay - especially the chapter that is over 260 Mb.

My condolences to you in having to make this change.

Alison Craig
Technical Documentation Specialist
BK Ultrasound | acraig at bkultrasound.com<mailto:acraig at bkultrasound.com> | bkultrasound.com<www.bkultrasound.com>

From: Framers [mailto:framers-bounces+acraig=bkultrasound.com at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Writer
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2017 6:38 AM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Re: [Framers] devolution: Framemaker to Word

Bill:

Re: Master Documents
See this bit of advice: http://www.addbalance.com/word/masterdocuments.htm#PageStart

As for converting using Mif2Go. We did it at a place where I worked several years ago. I don't remember it being that difficult. This weekend, I'll check my home computer to see if I have instructions that we might have written up for it.

FWIW, this is old, but might still be helpful: http://framers.frameusers.narkive.com/WV1P1OEv/mif2go

Nadine

From: Keith Soltys <keith.soltys at tmx.com><mailto:keith.soltys at tmx.com%3e>
To: "framers at lists.frameusers.com<mailto:framers at lists.frameusers.com>" <framers at lists.frameusers.com><mailto:framers at lists.frameusers.com%3e>
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2017 9:00 AM
Subject: Re: [Framers] devolution: Framemaker to Word

I feel your pain. I had to do this with a book a couple of years ago

The biggest issue I found was working with multiple files. The original
book was about 20 files. I ended up merging it into six. Fortunately there
weren't a lot of cross references to deal with.

Word is quite capable of handling large files now (300 pages is the biggest
I have). The document map and search features are actually superior to
FrameMaker's IMHO (I use Word 2013). Do make sure to use styles rigorously
and define your numbered and bulleted lists properly using the new
multilevel list styles. Here's a link to a blog article
<http://www.soltys.ca/blog/2015/07/how-to-create-a-word-2013-template-from-scratch.html><http://www.soltys.ca/blog/2015/07/how-to-create-a-word-2013-template-from-scratch.html%3e>
I wrote after we upgraded everyone to Word 2013 and I was able to rebuild
our templates from scratch.

If you have reusable content or want to use conditional text in Word, I
highly recommend 36 Software's SmartDocs add-in. It's not cheap but it
makes Word a viable alternative to FrameMaker for many situations, and in
some areas it's better than Frame (the snippet handling, variables, and
snapshots).

Regards
Keith

--
*Keith Soltys*
Senior Technical Writer
Architecture
TMX Group
(416) 947-4397
http://www.tmx.com/

On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 7:24 AM, Bill Greve <Bill.Greve at worldpay.us><mailto:Bill.Greve at worldpay.us%3e> wrote:

> For [reasons], I have a large number of Framemaker books (FM11) I need to
> convert to Word docs.
>
> I've just pulled up the Mif2Go user's guide to try and figure out how that
> works. Does anyone have any Mif2Go experience to share? Tips/process/etc...
>
> Is there anything else anyone can recommend?
>
> My first thought is I need to create a Word template with style names
> mirroring the FM template. Then save FM files as rtf and somehow apply the
> Word template to successfully update the styles??? I'm expecting this to be
> slow and tedious.
>
> Majority of books are under 40 pages and just a handful of chapters that
> I'll just combine into a single Word doc. Then there's a decent handful of
> a few hundred pages with 15-20 chapters and appendices that makes me
> shudder thinking about maintaining these in Word. Is using Word's Master
> Document a viable solution for the more unwieldy FM books? If so, is it
> worth explaining to the people I'm handing them off to and no longer
> supporting?
>
>
> Thank you,
> Bill
> _______________________________________________
>
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