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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