[Framers] Overprint Not Working in FrameMaker 10 and Acrobat Pro 2017

[Mike Wickham]

Hi, all,

I'm having issues getting overprint settings to work. I have a document 
that has a full-page, solid-color graphic imported and filling the 
entire master page background. So the page is not white, but has a 
color. I want to overprint black text on it, rather than have the text 
knockout the background and risk registration issues at press time. But 
I cannot get overprint to work. The text keeps knocking out the 
background. Here is what I have done:

1. I created a color definition called Overprint Black, set to Process, 
CMYK, 0% CMY and 100% black, and Overprint.

2. I assigned Overprint Black as the text color for all text formats on 
the body page. I thought this would be enough, but it wasn't so, I did 
the following in progressive steps.

3. On the master page, I set Object Properties of all text frames and 
the background EPS graphic to Overprint. I found some Adobe help that 
says that EPS files don't overprint, so I tried with a TIF background 
graphic instead. Same result.

4. On the reference page, I set the Object Properties of the Single Line 
background frame item (there are a couple of these on the page) to 
Color: Overprint Black and Overprint: Overprint.

So I have text color, text frames, and even the graphic (though it is 
behind everything) set to overprint. I expect text and single line rules 
to overprint the colored background graphic. But they all knock out the 
background graphic.

Using File>Print with printer set to Adobe PDF (with and without print 
to file) I generate a complete PDF, using FrameMaker 10 and Acrobat 
2017. The PDF is beautiful, but the Object Inspector in Acrobat shows 
"Overprint=False" for everything. And if I look at separations, the 
non-black plates are, indeed, knocked out.

I have been away from FrameMaker for a while, so am a little rusty. What 
am I missing? Why is Overprint not working?

Mike Wickham