Can I hide an existing topic from view in TOC and Search?

Question

I've seen several approaches on this forum for ways to create a help topic and mask it from specific users, or from everyone except via a link. However, all those approaches seemed to require creating the help topic in a specific way. We have a situation where the topic already exists, and we would like to hide it from all users temporarily. The existing topic is out of date and needs to be revised, but we are unable to revise it until some decisions are made by administrators. In the meantime, we don't want people misled by the old procedures. Is there a simple solution for this?

Many thanks in advance.

Amelia Ketzle

Business Intelligence & Technical Services

SIU Foundation

Peter Grainge · Accepted Answer

There are various routes but assuming you are not using the new 2019 version, go to Edit > Pod > Conditional Build Tag. Create a new tag called Exclude or similar.

Then go to the Topic Properties and apply that tag.

In your output create a new Build Expression. Select Exclude and then generate.

You should no longer be able to access that topic.

It will automatically be hidden from the TOC but any cross topic links will be broken.. To avoid that, you need to apply the tag to those links as well.

See www.grainge.org for free RoboHelp and Authoring information.

@petergrainge

Peter Grainge · Answer

Why not just apply a conditional tag to the topic and then use a build expression to exclude the topic from the build?

When you can revise it, then remove the tag.

See www.grainge.org for free RoboHelp and Authoring information.

@petergrainge

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