Removal of legacy (RTF) conditions

Hello,

I am working with a few FrameMaker 8 (unstructured) files where the track changes were left on in MS Word, before the document (RTF) came into FrameMaker 8.

Now, I have red underlined text and it does not want to go away. Of course, I could be missing something very simple.

Actually, I was able to open up the Character Designer found the underline boxed checked. So, I was able to fix half of the issue. But, I still have the issue with the red text. No matter what I do, it seems to remain there. Of course, I can simply delete this text and type over it again in black text, but I am hoping to find a better way.

Is there a way to fix this? Could I use Find/Change command at the document or book level to hunt down any red text and change it back to black text?

Where would I correct this problem, provided there was a way to do just that?

Thanks in advance for assistance on this question.

Regards,

-J

James,

Select the red text. Then in the character designer, change the color from red to black, and click apply to selection. In fact, if all your text is to be black, select all the text in the flow and set the color to black in the character designer. If you can remove the underlining from the character designer, I would think you could change the color also.

Van

If it is, in fact, a Condition, just go into the Conditional text tool and delete it.
A prompt will ask you whether you want to delete the text or convert it to Unconditional.
Select Convert.
At this point, I'd save the file out to MIF and reopen that and save it over the FM copy in order to remove any other Word carry-over characters.
Then just reapply your standard formats.

If it isn't conditional text, do the MIF cleaning step and reapply a black copy of whatever para formats the text uses.

Art

Hello guys,

Yes, I can remove the underline without a problem, but not the red text. This is true even after saving it out as a MIF file and then re-saving it as a FM file.

Re-applying the color black, does not do a thing. I still have a word, that is in red text. It must be something strange from MS Word.

So, for now, I guess I will have to re-type over those entries to get the black text again. Perhaps I can issue a Find/Change for red text - wishful thinking...

Regards,

-J

James, if you haven't yet tried it, there's a great freebie tool called MIFBrowse that could be very useful for finding intractible leftovers from Word.

<http://www.grahamwideman.com/gw/tech/framemaker/mifbrowse.htm>

In most cases "MIF washing" by saving a file as MIF and then reopening it does indeed help "disinfect" things that get carried through from RTF, but I've also seen stuff that didn't get removed that way, although the code wasn't anything that was documented in the MIF manual, either.

ah, and this could be one of them -- I've seen instances of a a "lock" property that comes through from RTF that doesn't get washed when saved as MIF, so maybe that's why the red color doesn't disappear.

Hello Sheila,

Thanks for the advice. I will have to give that tool a try. Yes, perhaps it is a "lock" property as you put it.

Thanks again,

Jim

> Yes, perhaps it is a "lock" property as you put it.

But did you check if it is conditional text?
That's the most apparent explanation for text that
cannot be changed using the Character Designer.

--
/Thomas Michanek

If you have a lot of this work to do... perhpas I can help...

further info

www.mifmasters.com

David.

James,

You say the red text is still there. What did you do to try to change it to black? You should be able to do this in the character designer, as you did with the underlining. THe character designer contains a color drop down.

Van

Just been dealing with the same scenario, Word "track changes" arriving as conditions because I was too lazy to clean the source .doc first ;-} And yes, it took two steps to clear it out: first make the text unconditional, then remove the formatting override. [Esc, o, c, p for those who enjoy the keyboard approach]