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August 30, 2011
Question

Malformed topic error - RoboHelp 9

  • August 30, 2011
  • 2 replies
  • 1793 views

Hi,

After checking out every suggestion on dealing with this error with no luck (including Peter Grainge's print issues and every other posting on malformed topics), I am at a loss - any help/suggestions on a solution would be GREATLY appreciated.

I have three single source print layouts in my project - Administration Guide, Operations Guide, and Reference Guide.  A few of the topics are common to several of these layouts.  WebHelp compiles perfectly along with all three different TOCs.

The Administration Guide generates a printed document, which needs the usual formatting in Word, but all the topics generate.  When I attempt to generate either the Operations or Reference Guide I get the malformed topic error message after about 10 topics - not always on the same topic.  Here's the puzzling thing to me - the topics that hang are topics that generated just fine in the Administration Guide.  Is this perhaps something to with my conditional build tags and the same topics being used for multiple layouts?

Print Wizard settings:

Generate Word doc only.

Location -different folder for each single sourced print Guide

Conditional Build Expression = None

I have tried using the Microsoft Word Template styles and the Stylesheet - default.css in turn with the same result.

I have been scouring the html code for weird leftovers from cutting and pasting topics from a previous Word doc (This project originated in Doc-To-Help, but as I had not created online Help previously, just a pdf output, I started a new project in RoboHelp and created each topic from scratch, but did cut and paste text from the Word doc.  I thought perhaps there might be an issue with Word tables which are plentiful in this project, but the error starts with topics that have no tables in them.

Any suggestions, thoughts VERY WELCOME

Many thanks in advance,

Sally

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2 replies

Participant
November 7, 2012

I encountered a Malformed Topic error message that I eventually resolved after trying many of the suggested resolutions.

Here's what I tried that did not resolve the problem:

  • Cleaned-up the HTML generated by the MS Word document <Word 2007>
  • Ensured my topic/filenames weren't too long
  • Removed tables
  • Eliminated all Conditional Build Tags
  • Deleted the 'offending' document
  • Confirmed Memory requirements/capacity (on my machine)

This did resolve the problem:

  • Resolved by reducing the size of large file(s) - (by breaking-up one large document into many documents)
  • Also of interest, the large document did contain many tables, which probably aggravated the condition (malformed topic)

  

The environment

  • I use RoboHelp Version 9.0.2
  • On a network
  • Also have a Local copy
  • Use Visual Source Safe
  • Have 351 Topics
  • Printed doc approx. 850 pages
  • Source docs are MS Word 2007
  • Use RH Style Sheet and applicable Word settings

  

I hope this info will help you determine which resolution is right for your situation!

Cara

Tech. Writer

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Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 8, 2012

Did both the local and network copies throw the error?


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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November 8, 2012

I actually don't know. A coworker said that I don't "really" use Local... Sorry I can't be more helpful .

Cara Tech. Writer

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 30, 2011

Tags will not cause any problem as you are not applying a build expression.

The fact that you have topics in more than one print layout is not a problem.

Is your project on your hard disk and are you generating to your hard disk?

How many topics in the project?


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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August 30, 2011

Thanks for your quick response Peter.  Funnily enough about 10 minutes

after resorting to posting on the forum I solved the problem myself. And

yes - the project is on my hard disk and being run there.

I created a new single TOC and document containing all the topics and

generated a print document.  It hung on a particular topic after a short

while which I opened in HMTL view - lo and behold there were Doc-To-Help

bookmark tags in that topic which I cleaned up - and after that it ran

every topic without the error!  Just tried running each doc and it worked

fine.  Now all I have to do is run through the Word doc formatting clean

up hoops!

The good news is that I did at least get a faster processing PC with more

memory out of this in the interim!

Many thanks,

Sally Goldberg

Senior Technical Writer

A&D Technology Inc.

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 30, 2011

Yeah we've all pulled that stunt to get a new PC.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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