FrameMaker changing my page layouts by itself

[LisaBoojoy]

In the last week, FrameMaker has arbitrarily changed the layout of my pages all by itself.

I will be in the middle of writing, and when I scroll or jump up to the first page, suddenly all my pages have a 1.5" left-hand column and the 'Room for sideheads' option has been enabled.

These are docs I've been working with for two years. This has never happened before, and I haven't changed any settings myself.

What's going on?

[Bob_Niland]

What FM version?

> I will be in the middle of writing, and when I scroll or jump up to the first page,

> suddenly all my pages have a 1.5" left-hand column and

> the 'Room for sideheads' option has been enabled.

While typing in-para at page boundary, or end of para, or just navigating pages?

My first guess is that the definitions for standard Master Pages Left and/or

Right have been altered by something, perhaps a format import,

or just data structure corruption.

[LisaBoojoy]

Just navigating pages (minding my own business )

Something's definitely altering the Master Pages, including a custom one for my 'first' page. This is happening while I'm working on Body Pages, and just happens all of a sudden—I haven't done an import of anything, I haven't switched views to Master Pages and back, I haven't done anything but type a bit and probably save the doc. I'll navigate to a different page and suddenly everything's way off to the right and I've got a magically appearing left-hand column.

Bizarre.

[LisaBoojoy]

One other thing...

It just happened again, and this time I noticed that even the text boxes that I use for call-outs have this 1.5" left-hand column.

This is so odd.

[FieryPantone]

Sympathy rather than help … I've often noticed (and never tried to understand) similar behaviour when opening an .mml file. I then run File > Import > Formats, and get a first page with a generous left indent – not defined anywhere in the mml, which with my simple level of use says nothing at all about page size, and not defined anywhere in the .fm I'm importing everything from. Flicking to Master page view and back clears it, but FM has the cheek to warn me about inconsistencies it appears to have introduced itself.

[LisaBoojoy]

Thank you, Niels. Sometimes sympathy goes a long way.

I almost never have problems with FrameMaker, not in 15 years of using it. It's usually so stable and reliable, not prone to weird behaviour. It's a mystery.

[Mike Wickham]

Have you tried a MIF wash? (Save as .MIF, then open .MIF file and resave

as .FM.) This sometimes cleans out errors in the file.

[LisaBoojoy]

Thanks, Mike. I'll try this now. Unfortunately, I have been experiencing the same problem on multiple files and figure it's something software-related rather than file-related. But your idea might help. Thanks for getting back to me.

[LisaBoojoy]

Doh! Sorry.

FrameMaker 11 (11.0.1.382)