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Known Participant
August 17, 2021
Question

Output generation warnings

  • August 17, 2021
  • 12 replies
  • 1010 views

I was wondering if someone could explain what the output generation warning means from the new version of robohelp (currently on 2020.5.71).

I get two types of warnings when I generate my content:

1. Skipped copying external file (all this files seem to be from a child project - so it's child to child linking)

2. Failed to copy - these seem to be images I have in the project however I could not see any errors in the live system?

 

Any ideas how I can identify and fix these issues?

Thanks,

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    12 replies

    Community Expert
    August 26, 2021

    Okay I cleaned up my variables and generated again. I got about a dozen "skipped copying" messages.

     

    I used the broken links report to find and relink to the referenced topics - for historical reasons the merged projects I upgraded couldn't be upgraded correctly so I knew I'd have to fix a lot of links (I'd done most with a RegEx Find and Replace, but didn't catch all of the variations).

     

    So for your errors, track down all the places that reference the topic in the warning message and relink to the topic.

     

    I highly recommend following the setup in Peter's instructions and it makes linking super simple, and theoretically will update correctly going forward. Do practice with the demo project. It really helps to understand the underlying setup.

    Peter Grainge
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    August 25, 2021

    You are getting the warning because the target of the link is in an output. If you look at the page I referred you to, I create such links at project level and they work in the merge.

     

    Check the download on my site and see how it is done.

    ________________________________________________________
    See www.grainge.org for free Authoring and RoboHelp Information

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    Known Participant
    August 25, 2021

    Thanks for your support, @Amebr !

    Community Expert
    August 25, 2021

    Okay, if you click on that and nothing displays in the panel to the right, then that's not the issue. 

     

    I'll be doing some more testing on my project tomorrow, so I'll have another look to see if I still get the message after cleaning up my variables and get back to you.

    Known Participant
    August 25, 2021

    Hi @Amebr , I am not entirely sure what you mean by these variables as I am quite new to Robohelp so still learning. If you are referring to the Variable Sets on the left hand side then I don't have any set - in none of my projects.

    Known Participant
    August 25, 2021

    Community Expert
    August 25, 2021

    Do you have variables that contain hyperlinks?

    Known Participant
    August 25, 2021

    Hi @Amebr  and @Peter Grainge , there are no child 2 topics in the TOC of the child 1 or viceversa. I only have topic to topic links.

    Known Participant
    August 25, 2021

    These are in child 1 project and the location "ICON_Procedures" = child 2.

    Peter Grainge
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    August 18, 2021

    Yes please clarify where the links are, topic to topic or in the TOC.

    ________________________________________________________
    See www.grainge.org for free Authoring and RoboHelp Information

    Use the menu (bottom right) to mark the Best Answer or Highlight particularly useful replies. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here.
    Community Expert
    August 18, 2021

    The "Skipped copying" message may be related to hyperlinks in variables. I suspect these will need to be converted to snippets as well, as I'm not sure the link path is being resolved correctly?

    Community Expert
    August 18, 2021

    Okay, I got the error in a small project I was testing.

     

    If you've upgrade from Classic, use variables, and have images in your variables, you'll get the "Failed to copy" message. You need to convert those variables to inline snippets.

     

    1. Open the variable and copy the code you see.

    2. Go to snippets and add a new snippet.

    3. Switch to code view and paste the code between the p tags. I've highlighted two changes described in the next steps in the following image.

     

    4. Go to the end of the img tag and just before the > add a space and /.

    5. If you get an error about alt text, check for the text 'alt' in the img tag. If it doesn't have a value click immediately after alt and type =. The editor will autocomplete a pair of ". You're now done with creating your new inline snippet.

     

    You might also need to switch back to WYSIWYG mode and fix the image path - it might not have upgraded correctly, but my project has complicated issues that probably won't affect anyone else., so I'm going to assume the path is already fine for you. 🙂

     

    Now you need to replace all the variables with the new snippet. I haven't worked that bit out yet. I suspect a complicated regex or script will be needed.