RoboHelp 2017 Webhelp search function not working

Thanks for posting back with your solution. 🙂 

I'm happy to post that I've solved the issue with the search function. When I finally got the time to dig into this again I revisited my post from 29 June 2022. I wondered if another PDF file was "offending" the search function as it did in 2016. The problem I faced was/is that now the database contains thousands of PDF files, the bulk of which have been uploaded since the search function stopped working. Thus it would be nearly impossible to try to ferret out the offending file. Then I remembered that I could exclude all PDF files from the search. I wasn't sure it that would work... but it did. I excluded all the PDF files from the search and the search function works like a charm. I also reduced my compile time from well over an hour to less than 10 minutes. 

I consulted with co-workers about the impact of excluding the PDF files from the search and we determined that since all of the documents are referenced in a topic that a detailed search of each PDF file/page was not necessary.

I may never know which PDF file brought the search function down... but given the nature of PDF files and all the different ways my vendors can save them it's probably best to exclude them regardless.

Thanks for all the help. The discussions and feedback got my brain thinking in the right vein to get this sorted out.

Some of the threads suggest closing robohelp, deleting the cpd and output folders, then regenerating. Have you tried that? As always, take a zip backup in case of problems.

Can you open the developer tools in the browser and see if there are any error messages? They probably won't be any help, but you never know.

"The search function used to work. The issue just "happened" one day." - What browser were you testing with & where is the content located? It's more likely that it's browser security "fixes" that are causing your issue.

However, your comment that a new project works indicates that maybe the issue is with your project. Is this a very old upgraded project? Have you tried testing it with different output (like HTML5)?