Solving Path Problems with PathChanger

Let’s face it, the FrameMaker documents that we work with rarely stand alone. They often have graphics imported by reference, text insets, and external cross-references, all pointing to files outside of the FrameMaker document. FrameMaker books point to book components that can be located just about anywhere. And when files get moved or renamed, we can end up with a combination of missing graphics, unresolved text insets, unresolved cross-references, or books with missing components.

A FrameMaker document or book stores paths internally for each of these items. PathChanger is a series of ExtendScript scripts that makes it easy to change these paths for a FrameMaker document or book. It has a command for extracting and writing these paths to a simple .csv file. This file can be opened with Excel where you can easily see and edit and change the paths. Once the paths are updated, another command applies them back to the FrameMaker document or book, quickly resolving the missing or unresolved objects. There are additional commands for writing and updating books and their paths to each book component.

Here is how it works for imported graphics, text insets, and external cross-references:

  1. Open the document or book that has paths that need to be updated.
  2. Choose File > Utilities > Write Paths to File. The script will write the path information to a paths.csv file in the same folder as the document or book.
  3. Open the paths.csv file with Excel and edit the Path column in any rows that you want to update. Do not change any of the information in the other columns. You can delete any rows from the csv file that you don’t want to update.
  4. Save the edited Excel file. The file must by saved as a csv file, not as a native xls or xlsx file.
  5. Choose File > Utilities > Update Paths.
  6. Choose the updated csv file that you saved in step 4. PathChanger will open the files listed in the csv file and update the paths.

The process is similar for updating book component paths:

  1. Open the book that has book component paths that need to be updated.
  2. Choose File > Utilities > Write Book Component Paths to File. The script will write the book component paths information to a book_components_paths.csv file and save it in the same folder as the book.
  3. Open the book_components_paths.csv file with Excel and edit the Path column in any rows that you want to update. Do not change any of the information in the other columns. You can delete any rows from the csv file that you don’t want to update.
  4. Save the edited Excel file. The file must by saved as a csv file, not as a native xls or xlsx file.
  5. Choose File > Utilities > Update Book Component Paths.
  6. Choose the updated csv file that you saved in step 4. PathChanger will update the book component paths in the book.

Download the documentation for more details on this powerful new program. Purchase PathChanger today for only $79 at our online store.

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