In order to secure the best possible file stability, follow the practices outlined below:




  • Store the project on a local hard drive. While QuarkXPress 7 and 8 work fine opening and closing files located on network volumes, any file that seems to be showing signs of corruption should probably be dragged to the local drive before you open it. This will reduce the number of variables that affect file stability.

  • Do an Option-Open or Control-Option-Open procedure on the file in QuarkXPress 7 or 8 (using the latest update of the application) and immediately save it under a new name. These are specific keystroke combinations that do two different things to the file:



    Option-Open (Mac) or ALT-Open (Windows): Holding down these keys while opening the project engages code in QuarkXPress that updates the text in the project to the current text flow code.



    Control-Option-Open (Mac) or Control-ALT-Open (Windows): Holding down these keys while opening the project will completely rewrite the project into the current file structure.



    In order for these keystroke combinations to work as designed, you must use the following sequence to open the project:






    1. Go to File > Open.

    2. Navigate to the location of the file in the Open dialog and highlight it.

    3. Hold down either of the keystroke combinations described above and click on the Open button.

      Note: No other method or sequence will engage the code in QuarkXPress to modify the file as it is opened.






  • Once you have opened the file, verify the path to any images in the Picture Usage dialog (Utilities > Usage...; then click on the Pictures pane) to ensure that there are no images that are showing with a Status of Missing or Modified.

  • If you suspect that there may be a problem with any picture previews, there is an additional keystroke combination that will cause QuarkXPress to reimport all the images in the project at the correct scaling and placement into their picture boxes. In addition, all picture previews will be either reimported (for EPS and PDF files) or regenerated by QuarkXPress (TIFF, JPEG, and other Raster, non-EPS image file types). To do this, follow the sequence described above, only hold down the Command key (Mac) or Control key (Windows) when you click on the Open button.

  • Perform a 'thumbnail drag' -- this technique is explained in Knowledge Base Article AE0088 - How to Perform a Thumbnail Drag.

  • After you have follow some or all of the procedures described above, save the file under a new name. After those optimizations, your file should be safe to work with.