Ah! In that case, you absolutely need the BookVars plugin from Leximation. Given what I now understand as your need, this will do exactly what you want.
BookVars is my most-oft-used plugin in FrameMaker! I maintain all my variables text in external text files using this - it works at the book level, by the way. Z From: framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Christenson, Pat Sent: Monday, July 01, 2013 8:46 AM To: craig...@hotmail.com; framers@lists.frameusers.com Subject: RE: Convert text to variables Hi Craig - I guess I haven't been clear about the process I'm trying to automate. It's not a case of replacing text with variables. We have books that have many, many variables in them. Each time the book is updated, the variables must be redefined. We get the new definitions as a plain text list. Our task is to redefine the appropriate variables with the new definitions. Right now, it's a slow and tedious to redefine each variable but once that's done, it's a simple matter to import the Variable Definitions throughout the book. I was hoping to find an inexpensive plug-in that could quickly convert (or map) the text list to variable definitions. Thanks for offering a solution, though. :) Pat Christenson From: Craig Ede [mailto:craig...@hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, July 01, 2013 10:32 AM To: Christenson, Pat; 'Framer's List' Subject: RE: Convert text to variables To do them all at once, just say "Replace All". This will replace all throughout a book with the right settings chosen. Also, if you don't have a book, you can build a temporary one that includes all your files. You probably one to test with will a one-by-one replace to make sure you are getting what you want. Remember that case differences might cause a problem. I doubt that FrameScript could do it better and coding this would certainly be slower. Craig From: framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com<mailto:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com> [mailto:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Christenson, Pat Sent: Monday, July 01, 2013 10:10 AM To: framers@lists.frameusers.com<mailto:framers@lists.frameusers.com> Subject: RE: Convert text to variables Thanks, Mike. I knew about the manual one-at-a-time way but was hoping to find something faster. I guess I'll have to look into ExtendScript. Pat From: framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com<mailto:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com> [mailto:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Mike Wickham Sent: Friday, June 28, 2013 4:57 PM To: framers@lists.frameusers.com<mailto:framers@lists.frameusers.com> Subject: Re: Convert text to variables You can do it from within FrameMaker, but not all in one step. Simply create your variable and then copy your variable to the clipboard. Then use Find/Change. Enter the text you want to replace in the Find section and choose "By Pasting" in the Change section. The paste function will create the variable and substitute it for the text in any other documents that you paste into. So you only have to create and copy the variable once. If you have a lot of terms to convert, this could take a while. So you might want to use FrameScript or ExtendScript to create a script to do it for you. Mike Wickham On 6/28/2013 2:44 PM, Christenson, Pat wrote: Is there a plugin that allows you to convert text to a variable? We have a long list of terms that correspond to existing variables in numerous documents. If we can convert the text to variables (without manually redefining each one), it would really speed things up.
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