Subject: RE: Pagemaker file corruption
From: P T Withington (ptw@callitrope.com)
Date: Tue Mar 07 2000 - 11:51:35 EST
Pagemaker (and Quark, and Word, and just about every other page layout program I know of) has bugs in its memory(file) management. If the files in question are files that have been edited many times (typically, a file that is updated each week/month/whatever and republished), you users have probably run afoul of these internal corruption problems.
I don't recall off the top of my head, but there is a (somewhat secret) Pagemaker command that you can use on such a file when you open it to try to reconstruct the internal file pointers. It may involve holding down command or option when opening the file. In my experience, when you get to this state, however, your only solution is go to your backups and find a previous version that is still readable, then move forward from there.
What I tell my users, to help them avoid these problems:
In Word: TURN OFF FAST SAVES. Fast Save == Please corrupt my file.
In PageMaker, Quark and Word: Create a master file to work from. Save this file using "Save As" not "Save" (Save As has the property of "straightening out" the internal links of a file). Duplicate this file each week/month/whatever, and work from that clean duplicate. Do not re-use last month's file. As you work, use "Save As" to create checkpoints of your file, named xxx.1, xxx.2, etc. (And after you've gone to production, clean up those checkpoints, please;-).
Hope this helps.
P. T. Withington
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