Max8 Xref with no materials from Max7 file?

[Damien]

When we upgraded to Max8 from 7 our Xref files stopped merging the materials from the Xref objects.
We have a lot of scenes with a lot of objects so it would be great if some-one here has found a (easy) way around this.
Thanks....Damien.

[Morbid Angel]

perhaps you should look into xref material, i dont know if its related to that but could be.

[Damien]

Thanks for the tip Morbid Angle, Xref Materials will help a bit, I did not think of that, problem is i still have to assign it to each object in each scene.
Max8 has a new Xref setup procedure that alows you to choose whether or not the material is included, it defualts to no materials when the Xref was created in Max7, and the option to include the material is greyed out. The way around it would be to recreate the Xref in Max8 with the 'include materials' option enabled but that would mean a lot of manual labour for me. I just wish Max8 would let us decide if we want the material or not after the fact.