There are a few things you can do to help an upgrade go smoothly. If migrating to a KMS environment, please visit the following for additional info: Preps Best Practices and Limitations - KMS.
Reading the release notes for the new version can help you prepare for change.
Preps versions earlier than 5.3 do not include SmartMark functionality. If you are using a version of Preps earlier than 5.3, you must create SmartMarks after the migration to Preps 11.
Before the upgrade, while you are still using the version of Preps that has static marks, recreate your static marks as SmartMarks.
If you recreate the static marks as SmartMarks in your current version of Preps, the SmartMarks will be migrated to Preps 11 and you can use them in the new version with no further setup required.
If you do not create the SmarkMarks before the migration, any migrated static marks are automatically converted to SmartMarks when you open a migrated template or job in Preps 11. However, the conversion works only in that Preps template or job—the converted marks are not saved in the Resources library. Before you can create new jobs or build new templates in Preps 11, you must set up SmartMarks.
defaults.ppd
file that can contain custom content entries for data that corresponds to custom or variable text marks must be manually copied