Missing Index File

Success! I see my index!! So excited. Thank you one and all!
I will save all of your advice - just in case.

I'm sorry, but you folks are way ahead of me. All I know how to do is enter a word in the top half of the Index box and drag the reference topic title to the bottom half. If this does not cause the Index to display in the software app, I'm sunk because I'm not sure what else to do. I attempted the Smart Index maker but couldn't make heads or tails of that.
That said, I do see the .hhk file and the data folders that were mentioned. And the comment...'If you put keywords in the HHK file, you can easily revise them'. I don't know how to put keywords in the .HHK file, but since I see it among the other files, I will look for it in the RH help and see if I can find out how to put keywords in there.
In need of RH for Dummies - Thanks all.

To amplify on Rick's comment: If you put keywords in the HHK file, you can easily revise them (e.g., changing "WebHelp problems" to "WebHelp quirks") or delete them from the index. I am not certain that RH will clean up after itself if you try to delete or revise index keywords embedded in topics.

Rick,

Definitely, feel free to pop in anytime.

Also, feel free to contradict me and tell the forum when I'm full of excess Comments Regarding Anticipated Problems.

As always,

Harvey

Thanks, I do see the folders you mention. I also see a .hhk file, which I think also contains Index entries. However, the size (45kb) of the file seems too small to contain the 40 entries and their associated topics. In the RH help it says I should choose either Index or Topic in the project set up. I want the terms in the Index to display the Topic they are found in - so I'm not sure what to choose. Can you advise what is best?

Avon,

The TOC, Index and Search data files are in the output folders whdata, whgdata and whxdata.

If the overall file is small, all data is in one file. If an Index, for example, is large (let's not worry for now about what's small and large are), the contents are divided into multiple small files for loading content by chunks, so you don't have to wait for the entire Index to load before seeing the top and entering a search term.

RH creates a sort of index file for the multiple Index files so it knows which files to load.

This is greatly oversimplifying, of course. But it's about as much as I understand.

RH tries to satisfy needs and capabilities of different browsers, so there are tthree sets of files -- one for later IE browsers, which can use a combination of html, dhtml and xml techniques; another set for earlier IE and some other browsers that can't handle xml or can't handle RH's flavor of dthml, and some that are even less capable.

That's why, for example, some browsers display the Index with a popup menu of links to multiple topics, and others show one or more numbers with each entry as links to separate topics.

You needn't do anything to ensure that they get into the output package.

Harvey