Frustrated with Preps

[Slammer]

Getting a little frustrated with preps and wanted to ask if anybody can help... A customer has just upgraded from Preps Ganging 5.XXX to Preps 8 and is using a home grown color bar. Now I can load the bar as it is a .eps but it shows only as a black stripe, all other bars are ok, what little thing am I missing? Then this customer has quite a few templates, oodles of them, and wants to have them in Preps8 and try as I may I can´t get them to work, I know that they should make new ones as it is like putting an engine from a Ford model T into a Fiesta but they want their old ´uns, it can be done but I can´t find how to do it. Any suggestions?

 

[Joe]

Have you tried the "Preps Template Migration Utility⁩" that resides in the Preps⁩ ▸ ⁨Utilities⁩ ▸ ⁨Preps Template Migration Utility for converting the templates?

As for the color bar...try opening the eps in Illustrator and saving it out as an Illustrator 8 eps. Also eps marks have to have an exact corresponding pdf in the same location.

 

[Slammer]

Have you tried the "Preps Template Migration Utility⁩" that resides in the Preps⁩ ▸ ⁨Utilities⁩ ▸ ⁨Preps Template Migration Utility for converting the templates?

As for the color bar...try opening the eps in Illustrator and saving it out as an Illustrator 8 eps. Also eps marks have to have an exact corresponding pdf in the same location.

I found that with the pdf just an hour ago and have been kicking myself since, DUH! I actually should have known that but I am not a regular preps user so I forgot about it. I tried the migration utility but could not get it to work with preps ganging.

 

[Joe]

In the Preps 8 User Guide it states this about Ganging:

A ganged layout consists of independently positioned pages on a press sheet. You can rotate, scale, align, group, and step-and-repeat the pages, and edit the margins and gaps directly in the workspace or in the Properties pane. Ganged layouts can be manually generated, or you can use the AutoGang feature.

So I don't think ganging uses the old style templates. I don't use ganging at all but just going by what the manual shows.

 

[Slammer]

You are thinking waaaaay too modern, the (old) program it´s self is called "Preps ganging" seems to be a predecessor of the Preps we all know and love, or hate depending on your mood.

 

[Joe]

The old Preps Ganging software from back in version 5 was a separate program from Preps I think. Now they are integrated into one. Your original post was about Preps 8 which is the latest version which is why I was thinking "modern".

As far as the templates from version 5 not working in version 8 or Preps...we have a ton of templates with a great majority of them being created originally in version 5. We have used them in version 5, 6, 7, and now 8 with no issues. In your Preps preferences....have you pointed the preference for Marks and templates to the correct location of the old marks and templates?

 

[Slammer]

Found it, the migrations tool needs access to the preps exe of both versions and it has to be on one computer. Tricky in this case but it works.