Is it possible to copy or rebuild an index if my topics have no keywords

Great news. So many times I have seen authors leave/let go and no one thought to back up their machine. Because there's an output somewhere, it's assumed the next person along can use that. Err, no. Doesn't work that way.

Just wanted to follow up...before I post a new issue in another topic.  The only way I got the Index back was to open a prior project that had the Index keywords present in the head of all of the topics.  I then opened the newer project where I had fixed all of the inoperative dropspots and expandspots.  I copied and pasted the body of just about every page from the newer project into the bodies of the pages that had indexing.  So my solution was completely manual.  But I now have an Index, working topics, and a glossary all in one project.

Thanks you for all the help and resources.

If you go back to the Reverse Engineering page on my site, the link to Rick's site has been removed. Instead Rick kindly gave me access to his site content and I have added a PDF version of his topic.

I have also clarified what the Help Essential script does.

Also there is a section on recovering the index from a Classic version of RoboHelp. So what I suggested earlier might work but do back up at each stage. You are in uncharted waters.

I would be interested to learn how you fixed all this when you have the time.

On the basis that your output must be webhelp, I am told the script on www.helpessentials.com will recover webhelp produced by RoboHelp 9 including the index.

Rick will let me have the instructions but it may be a day or two and will only help with the script references in the imported topics, not the indexing issue.

I will contact Rick to see if he can let me have his instructions.  I will also ask Help Essentials if the script does recover the index. If it does it would be to a Classic project but that can then be upgraded.

In RoboHelp 9 which was used to generate the project the keywords ended up in multiple wh files in the output and I don't believe there is any way to recover them yourself.

I'm surprised the output files are working. I would expect the source files you have to show lots of scripts in them which in Classic would have shown as red squares. I would import those files into a Classic project as well and then compare things like that in the two projects.

Without the script, if that does do what is needed, I fear your index is lost. All you have is the terms but with references that 2019 New UI would not understand as the structure is different.

Another thing you have to consider is the original source project may have had content that was tagged out of the build you have now imported. That is obviously now lost unless the old project helps to confirm that one way or the other.

Hmm. As I wrote that it occurred to me that one last resort would be to upgrade that old project and see if it gives you an index that looks close. If it does, it will be in an IDX file but before you copy it across. back up what you have done in case it makes things worse.

A couple things.  I'm using Robohelp 2019 (new UI).  I topok a look at the Reverse Engineering site, but it points me to a website (Rick Stone's Robowizard site) that's no longer active.  And I doubt my organization will shell out the money for a paid option.  So, I'm really hoping I can figure this out.
As I said before, I have the output currently published on the server.  I created a new project file and imported all of the htm files.  All of my dropspots and expandspots weren't working, so I manually edited each one (hundreds) to just display the images.  I am able to generate the output and publish to our server, and everything looks great.  It all works...except the Index, for which there is none.  I looked in the headers of some htm files, and the Index keywords are not listed.

However, I have an old project file that has Index keywords present...but most of the image links are invalid.

So I have topics with Index keywords but invalid image links.  Or topics with valid image links but no Indexing.  I really hope I don't have to manually copy the index code snippets from all of the topics to the topics in my working project.  There are over 600.

There is a paid for script available from www.helpessentials.com but I don't know if it works on versions as far back as RoboHelp 9. Check with them first. That I believe can recover the index.

Also Classic has an autocreate script option but only you can tell how good it is.

In projects created in RoboHelp 9 the index terms were typically not in the topic files.

You say you are using RoboHelp 2019. Classic or New UI?

How did you create the RH project out of the output? I hope you followed Peter's "Reverse Engineering" guide...http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/reverse_engineering/reverse_engineering.htm