broken links

Forum|Forum|18 years ago
August 21, 2007
4 replies
1073 views

can anyone explain how files can display as having broken links but the links don't display under broken links? how did it happen? how do I fix it? the files don't display when I publish

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A

Anonymous

I'm interested if anyone ever found a solution to this problem. I had a similar problem that has created A LOT of rework for my staff. I have a WebHelp Pro project. There are several folders inside the project. There are several topics inside each folder. We keep all our projects in the RoboHelp Source Controller for version control (although sometimes version control seems to be a problem in itself). Last week, I opened the project and generated the printed version of the documentation for editing successfully. This morning one of my staff opened the project to make the updates and in one of the folders every single topic (around 80) except for 1 had a red X on it as if the file could not be found. Not only were the files missing from her local computer, but also from version control. On my local machine I had the files in a folder, but they also were not displaying in RoboHelp. I attempted to import the files back into the project, but this didn't work. Nothing was showing up in the broken links folder and there were no broken links to resolve. On my staff members local machine all the files were completely missing. So, I copied all my files and pasted them into the correct folder of hers which then made all the topic visible in RoboHelp. However, they were uneditable. They all lost the style sheets and had the wrong formatting. Any time we tried to reapply the formatting or modify the topic in anyway we would get a message that says that the file could not be found in version control and that we should try to get the latest version. When I would click get latest version nothing would update as if I already had the latest version. Also, there were ni files checked out anywhere to check in. I have no idea what happened.

At this point the only solution that we have is to re-create each of the 80 topics lost and copy and paste the text from the uneditable topic and then delete the uneditable topic. Obviously, this is a lot of work that I'm disappointed that we have to do since there should be no reason that the topics are not there in the first place.

This actually has happened to us before, but not with as many topics or on as big of a project. My fear is that we'll recreate all the topics and this will happen again down the line somewhere. Does anyone know why this happens, how to prevent it from happening, or how to fix it when it does happen?

A

Amebr-ke0mH4

Inspiring

(The forum RSS feed seems to have had a hiccough and I've just received a bunch of old posts...thought I might be able to help a little with this if anyone is still watching.)

Sometimes, for unknown reasons, this will happen to one folder in one of our projects. Usually before it happens we get a message like "The file xxx needs to be writable" and you have an option to make it writable or not.

If you choose Yes to this question, the folder.fpj file is re-written as empty (just the base xml tags, but no folder/topic tags), thus causing everything in that directory to be deleted out of source control automagically (RH is very smart that way, assuming you actually want to delete the entire folder ).

If you answer No, however, the file is left as is, so nothing "needs" to be deleted out of source control.

Don't panic if you answered Yes. If you view the history of xxx.fpj, you can get the next oldest version of the fpj file, which will revert just that folder to the last checked in state. If you do it on the PC of the last person to work on the project (in this case yours - just so that the correct files are in the correct directory), then the files on your computer should just get re-added to source control. If not, you can add them manually.

HTH.

H

HKabaker

Inspiring

An X over a topic icon usually indicates the file is missing, or has been manually moved in Windows, outside of RoboHelp, so RH has lost track of its location.

Harvey

A

Anonymous

yes, Webhelp. The files have the X over the icon in the Topics panel, but nothing is listed under broken links in the Project panel. I'll check out your site, but, still, I can't account for this.

A

Anonymous

When this happens to me, I right-click on the broken link and click properties and it will have a tab "Used in" and then you can click on View and you should be able to find the broken link.