Drag and drop images into anchored frames -- can this be done with the images imported by reference?

Question

My company bought a product from another company and the only manuals files that came with it were in pdf format. I am currently grabbing text out in Acrobat, then pasting and reformatting it in FrameMaker. Boring and tedious. . . .
Eventually I get to the point of importing the illustrations. There are *hundreds* of them. As a rule, we import the files by reference, to keep the chapter size smaller and to be able to double click the image to open it for modification.
However, I can drag an image file from the folder window and drop it into an anchored frame. Oooh, this is fast--way faster than all the mousework that goes into clicking file>import>file>[choosing the file then hitting the import button].
But, dang it, that copies the image into the FrameMaker file. No double-click opening. Giant fm. file size. Mad boss, shaking an SOP standards sheet in my face.
So, my question: Is there a way to import an image *by reference* by dragging and dropping them into an anchored frame?
Thanks, folks.
Moore. Matt Moore.

Answer 1

I tried the RTF route and, in addition to getting the body text I wanted, got paragraph after paragraph of the page numbers, the illustration text, the header and footer verbiage, all randomly placed between body text paragraphs.
I did the same file twice, once by saving as RTF and deleting unwanted stuff, then repairing body paragraphs (each line of which is a seperate paragraph in the RTF file) and also by sweeping only the necessary text, then copying and pasting it page by page. The second method was a bit faster and less frustrating. Not to say that it isn't slow and frustrating in itself, but just a bit less. Less errors, too, with the second method.
Bummer about importing by reference. I don't suppose there's a way to set up recorded actions with hotkeys, is there? Like in Illustrator?
Thanks, Art.
Moore. Matt Moore.