Trouble importing a Pagemaker file into CS 5.5

Question

I am VERY new to ID 5.5 (today is my first day). I m trying ID because it is supposed
to import Pagemaker files So in my first attemp to open a PM6 file it fails.
But i'm so new I dont even know who to 'point the finger at'.
The non-working symptom is that the PM doc has a number of images
which ARE importing correctly, and  bunch of body  text which also
is importing correctly. But each imported image has  small text area
associated with each one that contained a photo title in the original
PM file. The 'title' areas import as text box ares but the text boxes
are EMPTY.
I am to new with ID5.5 to even know where to start.  I cannot load
the former PM files  because my former PM was on a Windows XP
system, and I'm now on an Win7 (64bit) system and can no longer
install Pagemaker on this Win7 system.
I would be pleased to load any of the files if that wouls help.
eatc7402 (stumped)  [email protected]

Answer 1

Bad news. Defaults only affect things in the future, not existing work, so you'll have to go spread by spread and make adustments in the files you already have.
For new work, Text Wrap should not be turned on by default, but best to check. With no docs open, open the Text Wrap panel and be sure the icon on the far left is chosen (no text wrap). You'll want to do the same for every old file you open to be sure you don't add unwanted text wrap to every new object you add. In ID, setting defaults, with a few exceptions, works this way. Things you set with no files open affect all new files, things done in existing files with nothing active or selected become the new default for the current file.
As I mentioned earlier, you can set the application preferences for text wrap to only affect text below the wrapped object (essentially mimicing PageMaker and Quark), so that might be another option for you in these converted files, but in general, it's a bad way to go for any "modern" file where you might want to actually make use of the additional features ID has to offer like transparency, blend modes and drop shadows, and support for placing tranparent images. Not obvious is that ALL of those things actually involve transparency-type blending, and when transparency is involved your type is at risk of being converted to outlines or rasterized for output. Keeping type at the top of the stack minimizes this risk, usually preventing problems entirely, but there are times when you might want text wrap to affect this text which is above an image in the stacking order. That's waht makes the default behavior so powerful -- you can have an image affect some text and not other by using the ignore text wrap option in the text frame options, but still use transparency effectively.