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ElaineJF
Known Participant
July 6, 2010
Question

Red boxes appearing in Robohelp topics

  • July 6, 2010
  • 1 reply
  • 1681 views

Hi,

I hope I can get some help on this.

There are red boxes appearing in what I thought were the source files of the Online Help. I have searched the forums and it appears these boxes indicate I am working with output files. This is obviously a big problem, but I did find an older answer that referred to http://www.robowizard.com/RoboWizard/NewProject.htm#MonthlyScry/062004.htm so I guess I can try to follow the instructions there.

However, can someone tell me how it is possible to work with output files, I know I probably made this mistake myself but it was unwittingly so I really don't know what happened. To the best of my knowledge, though, the .xpj file is not available after the OH has been generated?

Also, I opened an old version of the OH (dated 2008) and these topics also have the red boxes... is it possible we have been working with output files for 2 years without knowing?

I am currently using RH7.

Many thanks for any help, this is total user error but I'd like to avoid similar mistakes in future, obviously!

Elaine

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Captiv8r
Captiv8r
Legend
July 6, 2010

Hi there

Usually what we see happen is that one incorrectly configures the publishing destination. What usually happens is that they manage to point the destination to be that of where the source files live.

The whole purpose of publishing is to copy files from one location to another. It is indiscriminate and doesn't know that in these cases it's a wrong move. So the cycle is generally like this:

Edit

Generate

Publish (overwriting source with output)

Edit

Generate

Publish (again overwriting source with output)

Actually, in this scenario things may be worse than you think. Why? Well, it's because if you are publishing to the source, you are also likely having users open help from the source location. And that can only mean the project is on a network somehow.

The bottom line is that the cycle needs to break and things need to be seriously examined.

Cheers... Rick

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ElaineJFAuthor
Known Participant
July 7, 2010

Thanks Rick - this is very worrying.

What about the .xpj issue, I don't understand how the .xpj file is still available after the OH has been generated - or is this because the output files are simply added to the source files, assuming they were published to the source folder incorrectly?

Also, do you have any ideas about where we should start to fix this problem? If the older version (from 2008) also has red boxes in its topics, does this mean we have had this problem since that time?

Many thanks, once again, for any help you can offer.

Elaine

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 7, 2010

When you publish, files that exist are overwritten but any others are just left in place. Thus the XPJ remains.

Rick knows more about this area than I so perhaps he will chip in but I would have thought it impossible to work with output files without hitting all sorts of errors. I am right in thinking you have been working on them rather than you have hit this problem with some old help you have dug out?

You can also get red squares where a script has been placed in a source file and that can be harmless.

Is there a small topic with this problem where you could post the HTML?

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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