Subject: Pagemaker file corruption

From: "Robert W. Burgholzer" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 10:15:30 -0500

I post this reluctantly as I am unsure of the circumstances of
occurence. But, here goes. I have users who are runnning Pagemaker 6.5
and having a few occurences of unexplained Pagemaker File corruption.
Supposedly they have been acting properly, then one day they came in and
the files no longer worked.  That is, upon attmpting to open they get a
"File can not be opened..." and they are prompted to choose between the
"Last Saved"  and "Most Recent" backup. Clicking on "Last Saved" will
cause Pagemaker to have crash crying "Type 1", "Most Recent" will say
that "There is no mini-saved version" (a Pagemaker deal I presume).

Now, I have observed that if the computer hangs while running an
application from the server,  that application no longer is recognized
with the proper creator type. It becomes simpletext. Using resedit to
restore creator type doesn't seem to help. But these pagemaker files
display the proper creator type, until that is you try to open them in
Pagemaker and if you select "Last Saved" and crash the program, they
sometimes revert to simple text.

File sizes are staying the same however, so I know that the data are
still there.

Any suggestions?

Robert Burgholzer

--
Robert W. Burgholzer
Director of Technology
Sandy Spring Friends School
301-774-7455x111
[email-masked]

---

From: Matthew Reilly <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 10:51:00 -0500

Are the Pagemaker files being opened on the server volume? I was working in
a shop that had a similar problem with Pagemaker files on NT servers. I
believe that answer came down that Adobe doesn't recommend that you open
files on the server volume, you supposed to copy them to your local hard
disk first. It's more of a pain and you have to enforce strict file
discipline but it seemed to work.

cheers, 

Matthew Reilly

on 3/7/00 10:15 AM, Robert W. Burgholzer at [email-masked] said something
like:

I post this reluctantly as I am unsure of the circumstances of occurence.
But, here goes. I have users who are runnning Pagemaker 6.5 and having a few
occurences of unexplained Pagemaker File corruption. Supposedly they have
been acting properly, then one day they came in and the files no longer
worked.  That is, upon attmpting to open they get a "File can not be
opened..." and they are prompted to choose between the "Last Saved" and
"Most Recent" backup. Clicking on "Last Saved" will cause Pagemaker to have
crash crying "Type 1", "Most Recent" will say that "There is no mini-saved
version" (a Pagemaker deal I presume).

Now, I have observed that if the computer hangs while running an application
from the server,  that application no longer is recognized with the proper
creator type. It becomes simpletext. Using resedit to restore creator type
doesn't seem to help. But these pagemaker files display the proper creator
type, until that is you try to open them in Pagemaker and if you select
"Last Saved" and crash the program, they sometimes revert to simple text.

File sizes are staying the same however, so I know that the data are still
there. 

Any suggestions? 

Robert Burgholzer --
Robert W. Burgholzer
Director of Technology

---

From: "P T Withington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 11:51:35 -0500

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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