Adobe FrameMaker 10: Managing Alert Boxes

by Barb Binder 

FrameMaker has a long history of alerting us to various problems in our documents. We have alert boxes that pop up when we:

Open a document with unavailable fonts:

 

Open a document that was saved using an earlier version of FrameMaker:

 

 

Open a document that contains one or more unresolved cross-references:

 

 

During my live, online FrameMaker class, we perform an activity that will clear the history, effectively removing access to Edit > Undo and Edit > Redo (i.e., changing the margins or columns).

 

New in FrameMaker 10 is the addition of a checkbox in all four alert boxes to turn them off forever. Sounds tempting, doesn't it? Who wants to continually be reminded of something we already know? Well, I think that's the key. I will gladly disable the Clear History message and not look back, because I know which actions clear history. I'm also unconcerned about the alert for converting an older file to the current version of FrameMaker. (Once I upgrade to a new version, I usually don't go back.)

The other two, though? I'd leave them on. There's no way I want to get to the printing stage and then suddenly realize that I have unavailable fonts and/or unresolved cross-references. Sure I can fix them both, but I might miss my deadline doing it.

What? You already turned them all off? No worries. Just choose File > Preferences > Alert Strings and you can restore any of the alert boxes to their original states.

 

 

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About the author: Barbara Binder is the president and founder of Rocky Mountain Training. Barbara has been a trainer for nearly two decades and has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

 

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