Spell-checking FrameMaker Files, Part 1

Let's face it: spell-checking FrameMaker files is a chore, for several reasons.

First, FrameMaker does not follow text insets when doing a spell-check. If your document has text insets, and you run the standard FrameMaker Spelling Checker on it, it won't open and check any text insets for errors. Not good! Presumably, you're supposed to find and open and check every text inset manually. How's that for convenience?

Next, the options in Spelling Checker leave a lot to be desired. For example, you can't change just the current occurrence of a misspelled word. If you choose "Correct", it corrects every occurrence of the word, even if you only want to do one. Similarly, you can't ignore just a single occurrence: you have to ignore all of them or check all of them. No Undo, either.

Finally, its suggestions for the correct word are often wildly inaccurate. Does anyone really think that the right way to spell "acronms" is "acorns"? Am I really likely to be creating documentation that involves acorns? Does anyone consider the proper substitute for "entrace" to be entrees, interlace, Antares, or entrails? Talk about ruining an entrance!

For these and many other reasons, I rarely use FrameMaker's spell-checker. Instead, I use Microsoft Word's. Yes, I know, you can't import FrameMaker files into Word. Here's one way to get around that: create a PDF of your document, then save that PDF as a Word document. When you open this new Word document, you should have all the text in the original FrameMaker document. Admittedly, the formatting may be messed up, and some words stuck together that really shouldn't be (especially in headers and footers). But it's probably over 99 percent right.

The important thing is that you can now use Word's spell checker to check your document. I'm not claiming that Word's spell checker is the best in the business. But, it has the twin advantages of being more useful than FrameMaker's and sitting on the desks of practically every computer user.

When you find an error (say, "acronms") in the Word document, first find the corresponding error in the PDF. Acrobat will usually show you every occurrence of the word you're searching for, so you can be sure you have them all. Next, use the PDF to find the error in the original document. The advantage of using the PDF is that even errors in text insets will show up in your search – which is where we started in this discussion.