Creating a New FrameMaker Document

To start FrameMaker, select the FrameMaker menu item from the RCS Applications menu by first positioning the mouse cursor over that item; a thick black outline should appear around it. Rapidly click and release the left mouse button; the menu item should briefly appear highlighted in black to indicate that you have successfully selected it.

FrameMaker takes several minutes to come up, so please be patient! If you are working on an RCS workstation, you should see some "start up" messages appear down in the Messages window in the lower left corner of your screen as FrameMaker starts up.

When FrameMaker does complete loading, a single rectangular "button bar" menu containing five buttons labeled NEW, OPEN, HELP, INFO, and EXIT should appear on your screen. To open a new FrameMaker document:

  1. Click the left mouse button (left-click) on NEW. A dialog box will appear.
  2. Left-click on the Reports/ directory name in the list of files that appears, then left-click on the Create button.
    New file names will appear in the file list.
  3. Left-click on the desired document style (eg. ReportPlain, etc.,) and then on the Create button.
    A document window will open using a template. Open the Paragraph catalog to see what Paragraph tags are available.

Adding Text

Depending on the template which you selected, you will need to type in the appropriate text.

As an example, if you selected the ReportPlain template, the first line in that particular template is for the title. If you look in the lower left corner of the document window, you should see a field that says Flow: A : ReportTitle. This means that the cursor is resting in a paragraph area that is set up to appear as a title.

Type a title. The text will automatically appear in large type, centered between the left and right margins of the page.

Press Enter or Return, and the cursor will move to the next line. Look back down in the lower left corner of the window to see what style is used for this paragraph area. In this case, the style will be ReportAuthor.

Type your name. Press the Enter or Return key again, and the cursor will now reside in a Heading1 paragraph.

Type a heading and press Enter or Return. The cursor will move into a Body paragraph format, and you can now type the text of the report.

Every time you press Enter or Return, the cursor will continue with another Body paragraph; pages are automatically added to the document as you type.

Please note that in order to change to another paragraph style, you must select the desired style from the paragraph catalog.

Saving a Document

To save your document:

  1. Left-click on the File menu at the top of the document window; a pop-up menu should appear.
  2. Select the Save As option from the pop-up menu. A separate dialog box should appear on the screen when you do this.
  3. Ensure that you are in the proper directory where you wish to store your file, and then enter the name you wish to give your file in the Save in File: field.
  4. Left-click on Save to save the file. Otherwise, click on Cancel to abort the save and return to your main FrameMaker editor window.

Once you have saved your file in this way, you may use the Save option from the File menu for future saves.

The next time you want to work on this document, click on OPEN rather than NEW from the main FrameMaker "button bar" menu to select the file.

Printing a Document

To print your document:

  1. Left-click on the File menu.
  2. Left-click on the Print... option. A print dialog box will appear, in which you can set page ranges for printing, the number of print copies, the print scale, the actual printer, and other printing details.
  3. When you're ready to print, left-click on the Print button located in the lower left corner of the FrameMaker print dialog box.

The output will go to the printer named in the dialog box. If it says "ps", it will go to the default PostScript printer for your workstation.

Other FrameMaker Hints

Click on the items listed below to access additional FrameMaker-related hints.

Return to the ACS Consulting home page.

Return to the Software page.

Return to ACS home page.

Please send comments and suggestions to

consult@rpi.edu