I'm an idiot. I'm also a long time Adobe FrameMaker user (starting way back in the early 90s) and have been continuously certified by Adobe as both an ACE (Adobe Certified Expert) and ACI (Adobe Certified Instructor) on FrameMaker since 1997. You'd think I'd know the program pretty well by now and some days, it sure looks like I do. Other days, well, you read my story and decide.
I began laying out an annual publication for an association many years ago. It's a compilation of papers written by a large group of economists. I designed the first chapter 13 volumes ago, and have basically been using the same formatting instructions ever since. I import the all formatting in from a previous chapter for each new article, and then the next year, I import the settings from one chapter from the previous volume to the first chapter of the new volume and move forward. As fonts come and go, I find myself having to update the Font Families every few years. Other than that, it's been a pretty good system. Until Frame 8 arrived.
My first foolish decision was to install the first release of Frame 8 in the middle of my production cycle. (Please note that I am not doing that for InDesign CS4--I learned my lesson). I won't bore you with the details; let's just say it was a nightmare. Not one who is happy to suffer alone, I regularly called Adobe Tech Support and took my frustration out on them. Adobe blamed my computer configuration, I blamed their buggy software. It was an ugly time. On one conversation about fonts that are declared missing by the Console but simultaneously declared not found by a Find/Change command, the technician said, "You redesigned your template for version 8, right?"
"Of course," I responded, unable to admit that the template was probably defined in version 5.5.
It was too late to start over on that job, and it eventually made it to print, but I made a note to redesign the template for this year's job.
Last month, I redefined everything from a new document, and picked all my current fonts. I was feeling fresh and virtuous, and layout was going swimmingly until fonts started sneaking in from Word. First it was just one file, and I could keep it open while I updated my book. Then a couple more showed up. The Console said they were there, Find/Change insisted they weren't. I couldn't find them in the Word doc either. In my effort to be a detective, I'd even bring the files into InDesign, which could locate some of the missing font but not others. The fonts were driving me crazy.
The solution? Finally locating that little green checkmark next to Remember Missing Font Names in File > Preferences and turning the #$%@ thing off.
It turns out all I needed to do was uncheck it once to permanently map all the missing, unavailable fonts sneaking in from the Word docs to fonts that I actually own. How did I miss that all these years? And why didn't any of the technicians mention that last year when I was tearing my hair out over font issues?
Adobe does give us the following warning: "Be aware that doing this will cause you to lose the original font information referenced in the document." Yes! That's exactly what I need when authors send me files from all over the world using a wide variety of fonts that I've never heard of.
I may have felt like an idiot the day I found the checkmark, but I was a relieved and happy idiot.
Want to learn more about Adobe FrameMaker 8? Attend Barb's Introduction to Adobe FrameMaker 8 class. All you need is a computer with fast Internet access, a headset and the current version of FrameMaker (the 30-day trial version of the software works fine). You can ask all the questions you like because all virtual classes are led by a live instructor--this is not pre-recorded content.
Barbara Binder is the president and founder of Rocky Mountain Training. Barbara has been a trainer for nearly two decades and was recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide for 2007.
About the author:
Thanks, this is still a problem even today June 2012
Posted by: Justin | June 22, 2012 at 01:43 PM
This message SAVED ME all the hassels of going through my IT!!! I am using Framemaker 10 and the same issue came up when I installed Office 2010 plus. Doing so removed times, helvetica and some other fonts! I recently converted our Framemaker 5 documents to Framemaker 10. FM10 was a lifesaver for our 10,000 plus page FM5 design documents, but issues like this unavailable font thing make me feel like an idiot!! I had 9 large documents all setup, then I received these messages on "update". Thought I knew all the shortcuts, but didn't know about this checkbox. I plan to not recheck it. Some forums say you should. We do not have multiple users on these documents, so I think it is safe to leave it. Appreciate this forum and detailed story!
Posted by: Donna Telfer | October 11, 2012 at 09:05 AM