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General discussion

QuarkXPress crashes because of linked items on master pages?

Nov 14, 2005 6:34AM PST

The error is confusing; it goes something like:

"Cannot link across master page items" and brings me from my page, to the master page and keeps coming up with this same warning each time I try to UNDO, or when I try to go back to my body page, it wont let me because of some crossed link?

This is very confusing to describe, but HOPEFULLY someone else has had this exact problem and LUCKILY they have been able to fix this problem because when I FORCE QUIT or either REVERT TO LAST SAVED (this has happend to me twice now UUUGGGHH!!) it CRASHES Quark and the file is unreadable. I'm thinking of because this linking problem, it makes Quark crash.

Please HELP if you can, or possibly send me to a ALL KNOWING QUARK GURU!

Discussion is locked

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There are a number of Quark Guru's here
Nov 14, 2005 7:21AM PST

but they would all appreciate a little more information than you are sharing.
What version of Quark are you running, on what machine and with what OS?
Makes life a little easier if we are all on the same page Happy

P

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Mac details
Nov 14, 2005 11:00PM PST

Sorry, I forgot to add the details:
Quark 6.5
Macintosh G5 dual 2.5ghs Power PC, OSX 10.3.9, 1.5 GB DDR SDRAM.
I dont think it pertains to the make and model of the computer, other than it running on OSX 10.3.9.
Like I said before, the linking across masterpages, which I couldn't find which link to break, makes Quark crash when trying to open the file. I think that Quark is trying to open this file but finds something that doesn't work, making it crash. Of course... I don't know what Quark is doing... who does?

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This sounds like a job for
Nov 14, 2005 11:05PM PST

Taboma or Grimgraphix.

You guys out there

P

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Who are they?
Nov 14, 2005 11:12PM PST

Are those persons who can help, or programs or companys that do this problem-solving stuff?

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they are
Nov 16, 2005 10:13PM PST

readers of this forum that work with graphics programs for a living.

I have emailed them for you

BTW, what does Quark say about the problem?

P

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What are you trying to do ?
Nov 17, 2005 12:13AM PST

I don't use quark so I may not be much help but I will try.

Can you describe what you are doing ? When you talk about linking "across master page items" are you trying to place text in text boxes and link through a graphics frame instead ?

Usually a "master page" is a page with a predetermined layout style (text frames one place, graphics frames another). With adobe InDesign (which I'm working with right now) You drag your "master page" style onto the blank pages you want to follow that style. Each type of framing box (text, graphics) uses a different frame color to indicate its function, are you trying to fit something into a box that isn't supposed to go there ?

Links can also refer to pictures being used in your documents... Did you move a graphic from your graphic library folder to another location?

Kevin uses Quark so he would know the error messages better than I. I will give him the heads up. Hopefully he hasn't left for England yet.

I will need to know what you are trying to do to be of any help.

grim

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(NT) (NT) He's going to Turkey, Not England
Nov 17, 2005 1:06AM PST
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Manchester England On the Way to Turkey
Nov 17, 2005 3:13PM PST

Leaving Nov. 23rd.
Pete, will look into this a little more. Linking is used in Publishing mostly. Not day-to day Quark documents or simple brochure work.
The idea of linking is to make a change on the master template, and have all the pages transformed to that change. I could do a spell check and have the total pages updated also.
Unfortunately I am stuck with a very early version of Quark 3.2 and will not go to Quark 6.5 until the first of the year. V7 next June of '06.
I think that there may be a corrupt text or image box somewhare on the document. Once you try to open that page and hit the corrupt file?you will crash Quark instantly!!

There is a solution for corrupt text or image blocks and how to fix them. There may be a corrupt EPS file somewhere on the doc, as well.

Copy the Quark doc to the desktop. Copy all the EPS files to the desktop. Open all the EPS files one-by-one and do a save-as back to the desktop to replace the original files.
Do NOT double-click on the Quark doc to open!
Go to Quark, click open, select the file to open while holding down the command and option keys together. Now open the file through Quark. Any corrupt text or image blocks will be updated and fixed.
If the document opens you are home free.
Next, replace the corrupted doc with the newer Quark file from your desk-top.

Pete, this works for a corrupted text or image block.
If this does not help, another solution is to re-install Quark.
One other fix would be to increase the memory alloted to Quark. Could be running out of memory on a very large document. Don't know how much of a hog V6.5 is.

I have always multiplied with increments of 4. Example:4x12000=48000KB, the preferred size as an example.

Click on the Quark icon. Key Command plus i (get info), go to memory. If the suggested size is 9000KB, the minimum size is 9600KB and preferred size is 29240KB:
Increase Minimum size to 39400KB and set the preferred size to 58480 or higher without running other apps at the same time. Could go to 72000KB if working with massive Quark files.
Time to purchase more memory? Don't know how much memory he has and how much alloted memory to Quark?

Quark is a great program but QUARKY at times.
I would reinstall Quark on a mothly basis about ten years ago. My preferred size was set at 48000KB when working with a 64 page document.

Pete, Hope this helps with Quark problems for your poster. I wanted to send this to you first.

OFF SUBJECT: I will be at the Manchester airport for about two and a half hours before flying to Istanbul. Suggestions for a good Ale?

-Kevin

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Good Ale
Nov 19, 2005 6:48AM PST

Being in the airport will probably limit you in your choice of "Ale"
Ale is a different sort of beverage, still in the beer category though, and can usually be had, on draught, as IPA (India Pale Ale) A number of breweries make a version of it. I am not familiar with Manchester Airport but they will probably have a "sort of" regional choice along with the generally accepted national brands. Tetleys (not to be confused with the tea) make a decent brew , John Smiths is good. Remember that we normally do NOT drink as much beer from bottles as you do in this country. Beer is usually sold in a Half pint glass or a Pint glass. (with or without handles) A pint in the UK is 20 oz and 10 oz for the half pint and is not particularly cheap! Average bottle in the US is 12 oz. Women drink from half pint glasses if they are drinking beer or cider. Caution, Cider is an alcohoic beverage in the UK. Forget the Apple Juice concept! You may find that the temperature of the beer is not as cold as you serve it here. Two reasons for that, traditional beer is brewed to achieve maximum taste at around 50F and therefore does not taste as good when chilled to 30F. Other beers will be served chilled. American beer, on the other hand, is brewed to taste best around 34F and tastes like doodoo at 50F.
The average beer is stronger than here so if you have a pint or three before boarding the plane, be aware that the diuretic effects will be with you as will a certain fuzziness.
Enjoy the trip

P

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Good Ale
Nov 21, 2005 10:35AM PST

Peter. I want to try Bad Elf or Really Bad Elf brewed in England.
Wish me luck finding that ale.
On the other hand, I bought a bottle of Pimm's Cup No. 1 today. Both my wife and I enjoy it served with a wedge of fresh cucumber.

Wish me luck in the duty-free airport. All I want is Beefeater Gin. My favorite.
I will try out John Smith's beer as well as Tetley's.
Thank you for the English tour at Manchester airport.
Eight hour flight from Boston.
Can't wait to have a pint or two while in Manchester airport. My wife likes Stella beer. She and her two sisters get crocked on that beer.

Thank you Peter, :

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BTW
Nov 17, 2005 12:21AM PST

I just noticed the posting date on this so your problems may be moot by now.

Any way, one thing I would do is... if you can... save the current project as a different file so that anything more you do doesn't effect your original file. It often helps to get rid of that queasy stomach feeling when you know you aren't throwing away hours of work if you make a mistake trying to solve your problem.

Luck !
grim

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MOOT
Nov 17, 2005 3:17PM PST

Grim, never looked at the posting date. Could be!
I did post back to Pete with my thoughts on help.

-Kevin

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If you read the thread you will see that this is ongoing
Nov 17, 2005 9:45PM PST

we have been waiting for you and Taboma to arrive!

P

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Read the thread before?
Nov 18, 2005 2:07PM PST

Peter, I did read the thread that this was an on-going problem. (With this document is what I read out of it.) Not ALL documents and ALL files.
Lots of info missing from neoview's original post as to? does it happen with ALL NEW Quark docs or just this one particular document file?
Grim asked exactly what do you want to do? No answer back because I think when you asked him?What does Quark have to say? He may have been unable to ask Quark!

Shivvver mee timmmmbers!??
Wants a free fix?

Neoview's quote: ?Like I said before, the linking across masterpages, which I couldn't find which link to break, makes Quark crash when trying to open the file. I think that Quark is trying to open this file but finds something that doesn't work, making it crash. Of course... I don't know what Quark is doing...
who does??

My inkling is that he has no clue of what is going on with Quark at all?who does?
Not a question of who knows about this and who can help me?
Of course the application crashes when it cannot read a corrupt text or image block. Same goes for a corrupt image file.
Neoview's term for linking is wrong. Text is linked from one paragraph to another through the document so that text flows from one page to another throughout the document. Not images either. If missing an original image it will not crash Quark at all. That issue comes when you are trying to print or going to option F13 (image update.)

There are two other areas to look at for potential problems. One is a corrupt font issue. (Thanks to one of my co-workers.)
The second new one is that if ALL the Quark documents crash, the problem most certainly is with a Quark XTension.
How to fix an XTension problem? Start Quark with the shift key held down to disable the XTensions from loading. Take all the Quark XTensions and set up a folder with XTensions disabled.
(Pete, you know more about how to set up this folder better than I do.)
Next is to load one XTension at a time and to test out Quark. Works! Add another one after restarting etc. until you find the problem XTension and put the XTension back into the XTension disabled folder.

Presently I have 24 files in the XTension folder. And 20 files in my XTension disabled folder. There are plenty of Quark XTensions to choose from. Some are very good and some are very bad.
Pete, too bad that a poster never gets back to us at all after our posting.

So far there may be these problems to look at:
1. Corrupt text or image block
2. Corrupt image files
3. Memory issue
4. Quark and to do a re-install
5. Font issues
6. XTension issues
7. Missing something important from a pirated copy?

Several good things came out of this original post for me. One was to track down potential problems in Quark Express and post possible solutions. (Makes my brain work better to remember past problems and solutions.)

Another was to thank you for asking Grim and I to help.

I would still have liked to hear from Grim, if the poster had given more information to Grim.
Not a waste of our time at all. Grim has the info to use with our Graphic's forum at some future date.

Pete, can you save any of this info for an achive at some future date? Team up with Grim?
Still want to hear from you on how to have an Xtension disabled folder set up. That would help with these threads.

-Kevin

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??
Nov 18, 2005 10:48PM PST

your questions would be better directed at the person with the Quark problem. I just told him I knew nothing about Quark but knew someone who did.

Email me about your extension query. I cannot find your questions anywhere


P

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(NT) (NT) Neo... Are you there ?
Nov 19, 2005 1:17AM PST
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Neo is
Nov 20, 2005 2:18PM PST

probably gone.

-Kevin

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Alas poor Neo, we knew him not.
Nov 21, 2005 12:49AM PST

Have a good holiday everyone.
Again safe trip and best wishes to your son and his new wife Kevin.

grim

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(NT) (NT) His new wife is called Kevin???
Nov 21, 2005 8:56AM PST
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Wife's name is called?
Nov 21, 2005 10:52AM PST

Hande. Wish I knew how to set up a link for you both to view. Will have to email you.
Thanks,

Kevin

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Man, miss, a, comma, and, you, never, hear, the, end, of, it
Nov 21, 2005 11:27AM PST
Grin
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Miss a cooma,,,
Nov 22, 2005 2:50PM PST

or making a typyo, that is the wurst!

Grim, funny comment from you. Always enjoy you posts and Peter's. :

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QuarkXPress crashes because of linked items on master pages?
Mar 15, 2006 12:43AM PST

Several of my designers are expereinecing the same issue with Quark 6.5. Sometimes you can fix the problem. When Quark takes you to the master page you have to unlink the main text box from the icon in the top left corner of the page. You can then work with the document. This doesn't help if Qurak crashes. When that happens the file goes corrupt and I have been unable to recover. Haven't seen anything from Quark on this.

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QuarkXPress Crashes
Mar 15, 2006 2:29PM PST

elston56. It may not be a text link problem. If you have any EPS files that were generated from Adobe Acrobat and saved them as a Pict/View/EPS File, Quark 6.5 will crash instantly.
One major problem still left. You have to get rid of all old Pict/View/EPS files still on the Xpress doc and clean out all files from the folder holding these old EPS files. Clean out all old files that had a Pict/View/ EPS first and redistill them.
You have to redistill the EPS file through Adobe Distiller and to produce a new PDF. Open the PDF and EXPORT the file as a Tiff/View/EPS file from your new Acrobat file.

You will have to add the new Tiff/View/EPS files and import all to your Quark folder. No longer is it called a Quark document. Now called a layout with Quark 6.5.
I'll bet Quark never told you about this incompatibility, did they? Quark 6.5 does not like Pict files.
Painful experience to learn.
Glad that you found this older post. See my thread and what to do also for corrupted files. May be a corrupted text or image block also. NOT LINKING TEXT blocks at all.

Wonder why Quark has not called you back? Odd on their part.

Post to the Graphics Forum with any other new questions concerning Quark 6.5. Grim and I will gladly try to help you out.
Post back when the issue has been resolved. You are not alone.
Hope this helped you. We would like to hear from you.

-Kevin

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neoview?
Mar 26, 2006 7:14AM PST

Where are you?
It seems you post and suddenly disappear.
Again. No thank you at all?

Do not let a diseased Yak sit on your keyboard!
If you need help from this go to your board of health.

-Kevin

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Post the crash log
Apr 8, 2006 4:25AM PDT

Sorry, this is very 'Johnny come lately' but probably the best thing to do if you get persistent Xpress crashes is to post the crash log the program is supposed to produce onto the forums at www.quark.com.

Them some really, really deep technical dudes will work out where your problem is.

Before that, it's usually worth disabling the Quark Extensions, to see if that sorts it. If so, it doesn't take too long to nail the extention that's causing the problem.

As a last resort, try contacting Quark's technical support team directly. My experience so far has been that they email you back with a few questions that are fully answered in your original email and you never hear from them again. But hey, what do you expect for that kind of money?

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Simon, Quark is expensive?
Apr 11, 2006 3:19PM PDT

Right on!
The only problem that I have with the poster again is the fact that he may have bootlegged another copy and cannot ask Quark.
I am going to post on the Graphics Forum now concerning Quark V7.
Thanks, Simon,

-Kevin

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Xpress protection is a problem
Apr 12, 2006 9:47AM PDT

Thanks for your reply.

I know what you're saying about unregistered users and I'm not about to help anyone in that category.

However, Quark's approach to copyright protection gives me a problem because I often need to set up an ad-hoc newroom, using hired equipment. Because the spec of the gear changes on each job, the best I can do is set up multiple copies of Xpress in demo mode. (ie - I deliberately don't register the software.)

Quark is making life difficult legimate users like me. I just hope it can balance that with enhanced user response.

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Xpress protection
Apr 12, 2006 11:27AM PDT

simoncroft, are you going for the new QuarkXpress V7?
Looks impressive to say the least.
Go to quark.com and check out the new version. Quark is mentioning spring for the offering. I had already heard from our company late June or early July.
Public beta version is OK to use until May 2nd.

The transparency effects looks awesome. Quick effects without going to Photoshop.
Our company will be working with this very soon.
I still have not figured out all that is with V6.5 since this past January.

A number of members here are at college learning all sorts of programs, like InDesign. I have my hands full learning the current version of Quark 6.5 at work! :

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I'll buy Xpress V7
Apr 15, 2006 3:08AM PDT

I'll certainly buy into V7, because it has features I want and - despite my moans - I've probably earned more money using Xpress than any other application, with the possible exception of Word. I've also heard that it has been recoded from the ground up, so should make better use of the power of OS X.

I'm a licenced inDesign user but it can't deliver the productivity of Xpress when it comes to producing tight news pages. Okay, that's partly because I've spent 15 years doing it the Quark way but also because some important settings can't be adjusted from the keyboard.

If I wantred to spend half my working day delving into the appropriate floating palletes - well, I've always got Illustrator ;-}