Inspiring

Question

Disappearing Topics

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
July 9, 2018
2 replies
1287 views

Note: This topic may be related to the "Disappearing Topic" topic posted in 2008. That topic indicated a WebHelp topic could disappear if it had nested div tags. The solution was to remove the nested div tags.

I am using RH 2015 to produce WebHelp. We are using Source Control, but I am currently the only one making help updates. In the last several years, I have noticed 3 topics disappear from the help. One disappeared frequently enough that I started checking to see if it was present or missing each time I generated the help. I'm not sure what changed, but I have not had any issues with that topic in months. Now, two other topics are randomly disappearing. One has nested div tags. The nested div tags are resulting from using nested DHTML drop-down text. The div tags do not appear in the HTML view within RH; they do appear in the generated web page in the output. If possible, I would prefer not to have to stop using nested DHTML drop-down text. I have several topics with nested DHTML drop-down text. This is the only one that is disappearing (at least that I have noticed).

The other topic that is disappearing does NOT have any nested div tags (no nested DHTML drop-down text either). For this reason, this post is different from the similar post 10 years ago.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

Other details: When I noticed a topic was missing from the output, I looked for the topic in the RH project. It did not appear in the Topic List. It did not appear in the Project Manager. The topic name did appear in the TOC with a red X, indicating the topic was missing. When I looked in my local copy of the folder where the files are stored outside of RH, the topic was present. Using the Project Manager tab, I re-imported the topic. I checked the topic to see if I needed to re-add Index terms. I did not; they were still present. I regenerated the WebHelp output. The two missing topics are now present. Other topics in the generated output include links to these topics. The links still work, and I did not have to re-add/re-create the links.

Any idea what may be causing these topics to randomly disappear? Thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

I think you can rule out the 2008 issue. There was an identified cause of that and you wouldn't be looking at just a few missing topics.

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

@petergrainge

Use the menu (bottom right) to mark the Best Answer or Highlight particularly useful replies. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here.

A

Amebr

Community Expert

When it happens next try the following - I've mostly seen with css and image files, but it might apply with htm files too.

1. Anywhere in your project, create a new, temporary, folder. You can leave it as the default name.

RH will think a little bit and your missing topics will hopefully re-appear. (Edit: if your project is really large, it might actually be a long time.)

2. Delete the temp folder. Because you use source control, you will probably need to do some manual clean up in your source control tool to delete the folder properly.

Usually I "see" the missing topics after I delete the CPD (which can be done automatically with a RH setting). I think creating the folder forces RH to refresh the cache in a different way than opening the project does, thus re-finding some missed files.

I can't guarantee this is what happens for you, but it's not hard to try.

And if it does work, please submit a but report. I've been submitting for a decade now (and finally managed to easily replicate in one of their sample projects), but still haven't seen any movement on a fix.

T

Tim D MorrisAuthor

Inspiring

I'm still not sure of the cause of the problem, but I think I found a solution.

I generated the WebHelp a few times today without incident. No missing topics that I know of. During a later attempt, RH crashed. I deleted the .cpd file, re-opened the project, and regenerated the WebHelp. The topics that had been missing previously were gone again. I re-added them, closed, and re-opened the help. They were still there. I deleted the .cpd file again, closed, and re-opened the help. They were gone again. This time, instead of re-importing the topics, I opened the applicable .fpj files (the missing topics are in different folders). The .fpj files did not include the topics as I suspected. I manually re-added them, which "added" the topics back to the project. I closed and re-opened the project. The topics were still there. I closed the project, deleted the .cpd file (the test you noted, Amebr, that seems to cause the files to go missing), and re-opened it. This time the topics were still present. I did not try the recommendation to create a temporary folder.

While it's too early to know if the topics won't go missing again, at least they now pass the "deleting the .cpd file" test. The .fpj files are in source control. I'm not sure if that will "protect" them from losing these topics again. Thoughts?

Also, I did NOT see the red X's this time when the topics went missing. Additionally, the "Missing Topics" report indicated no topics were missing (when the topics were missing). I'm wondering now if I am missing any other topics I'm not aware of. Amebr, if I create a temporary folder, where would any missing topics re-appear? Would they appear in the temporary folder, or in the folder(s) they disappeared from? I may still regenerate the project, get a current topic count, add a temp folder, and regenerate the project again to see if the count changes. Yes, I know I can run the Topic Properties report to get a topic count, but the project has more topics than the generated WebHelp output, and I want to see if the conditional build tags influence the counts. More on that tomorrow....

A

Amebr

Community Expert

They will appear in the folder they disappeared from.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded