Update the missing images to a new path once for all?

[Echo Tan]

I met with a problem when upgrading the Help documentation to a new release. In order to indicate different release versions, I have to use a prefix to the images folder, let's say, FM files are linked to images that are stored in the folder named "R1_images". Now if the image folder is renamed to "R2_images", all the previous imported images become missing, and FrameMaker asks me to redirect all images one by one. Does anybody know how to update the missing images to the new path once for all?

I know this might not be a good practice to name the images folder with a prefix of the release version, which will not be commonly used through the whole documentation lifecycle and will be hard for maintenance. This practice, however, has been followed before such problems were realized. Thus, anyone can help? I really don't want our folks to redirect images one by one. It would be quite time-consuming....

Thx.

Echo

[Thomas_...@adobeforums.com]

In the Missing File dialog, there's a setting "Update document
to use new path" that must be turned on. If it's on, you
should not have to redirect every single graphic.

There might have been a problem with this function in some
FM version, I recall. What exact version of FM are you running,
and have you downloaded and installed all the patches from Adobe?

--
/Thomas Michanek, FrameMaker/UNIX/MIF expert
Technical Communicator, Uppsala, Sweden
http://go.to/framers/

[Neil_R...@adobeforums.com]

You could save the file as a MIF, open the MIF in a text editor, and do a global change of R1_images to R2_images, save the MIF, and then open in Frame, and save as a FM.

[Echo Tan]

Thomas,

I'm using 7.1, but haven't patched the tool. Does it matter this functionality too much if the patch isn't installed?

I have to tell my problems more clearly. If names of graphic files keep the same, FM files can update all the other graphics once the first graphic is redirected to the correct path. However, when the names of bundles of graphics change from "R1_image_*.gif" to "R2_image_*.gif", I cannot update all the images once for all, but will be asked to do that one by one. So, the question is exactly how to automatically update the image paths when bundles of "R1_images\R1_image_*.gif" change to "R2_images\R2_image_*.gif" at one time or at the least effort....

[Echo Tan]

Neil & Thomas,

Already got it done. I saved it as MIF and then did a global Find & Replace. It worked!

But when I save the MIF file after Replace All, I was prompted that some MIF features may be lost when saved to a plain text format. What kind of features would be lost? I checked the new FM files and they seemed to work well, but still a bit worried....I wouldn't want to bring the broken docs to my users while I were blinded.

[Thomas_...@adobeforums.com]

First of all, FM can only change the path to the imported files.
It would be to ask a lot of FM to also understand what changes
you have made to the filenames... That's why you have to locate
each file. However, I'm not sure why it's necessary for you to
change *both* the folder name and the file names.

> But when I save the MIF file after Replace All, I was prompted
> that some MIF features may be lost when saved to a plain text format.

What tool are you using to edit the MIF file? I cannot really see
what that message refers to. Use a plain text editor.

[Neil_R...@adobeforums.com]

"But when I save the MIF file after Replace All, I was prompted that some MIF features may be lost when saved to a plain text format."

Were you using Word as your text editor? If so, just disregard the warning message. Word is just telling you that Word features will be lost when saving as text.

[Echo Tan]

To Thomas:

"However, I'm not sure why it's necessary for you to
change *both* the folder name and the file names."

I'm not the person who made the decision. If I were, I would have tried to avoid such problems from the very beginning. However, it seemed that the team had to change both the folder name and the file names, since those previous FM file folders are prefixed with a particular release indicator. Now the documents are migrating to a new release. Hope that we would not use such kinds of prefixes in the future.

To Neil:
Yes, correct. I was using MS Word. Clear now! A good choice should go to kinda Notepad, EditPlus, or UltraEdit, etc.

Let me say thanks to you two. : )