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Inspiring
May 5, 2025
Answered

RoboHelp 2019 .chm output not displaying dropdown text correctly

  • May 5, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 549 views

Back on 11/25/2019 I had a post concerning the issue I was having with Drop-down Text not displaying correctly when a converted a 2019 RoboHelp Classic project to RoboHelp 2019 (attached screenshot of title of 2019 post). Curious if this issue has been resolved in new releases. I've been trying to read through version releases to see, but thought this would be faster. I was also having an issue with once I converted a Classic project and then tried to the Microsoft HTML Help output it would get stuck 'indexing'. I found my solution in this Community and once I deleted the previous TOC from the Classic project and created a new one my output to Microsfot HTML Help created. I have hundreds of Drop-down Text in my Help file (.chm) to hide definitions. I may abandon my use of Drop-down Text or if issue has been resolved, maybe I will push our IT department to get the latest verison of RoboHelp. I hope I'm making sense. It's Monday morning here. Appreciate any thoughts!

 

Correct answer TELCOR RCM

Resolution was to abandon RoboHelp 2019 and move forward with latest version of RoboHelp 2022 which required converting RoboHelp 2019 Classic version to RoboHelp 2020 and then taking that project and creating RoboHelp 2022 project. Everything looks as designed, especially my drop-downs!

3 replies

TELCOR RCMAuthorCorrect answer
Inspiring
May 13, 2025

Resolution was to abandon RoboHelp 2019 and move forward with latest version of RoboHelp 2022 which required converting RoboHelp 2019 Classic version to RoboHelp 2020 and then taking that project and creating RoboHelp 2022 project. Everything looks as designed, especially my drop-downs!

Known Participant
May 7, 2025

I don't know if this will be helpful. It relates to drop-downs in RoboHelp before and after the RoboHelp rewrite.  I generate Frameless output, not .chm files.  I also don't know if I reported this issue in this forum or just sent a bug fix request to Adobe.

In Classic, drop-down IDs (data-targets in the code view) were based on "POPUP" + a presumably randomly generated 9-digit number (e.g., "POPUP704169272"), making each new ID unique in a given help project.  In the rewrite, the ID was replaced with "drop-down" + an incremented number starting at 1 after the first instance (i.e., "drop-down", drop-down1", "drop-down2", etc.), with the incremented number restarting from the beginning for each new topic. During the upgrade, the system kept the previous numbering system for existing topics (which also include a javascript at the bottom of each page in the project's code view, prior to generating any outpot).  If you copy and paste content containing drop-downs from one topic into another, the system duplicates the ID from the copied content into the pasted content.  If all the IDs are still unique in each topic (which they will be unless you copy a drop-down and then paste it more than once into the same topic), the drop-downs all still work fine because the IDs are still unique within the topic.  If all the IDs are not unique in any given topic (which they are not likely to be if you consider that each new topic with, say, three drop-downs, now all have a "drop-down", "drop-down1", and "drop-down2"), it doesn't happen immediately but the system eventually recognizes it has duplicate IDs in the same topic. It resolves the error quietly behind the scenes by keeping the content for one instance of the duplication and removing the drop-down content from all other instances of the duplication, replacing the removed drop-down content with an "undefined" message visible only in the code view.

Considering how many times I copy and paste content from one topic into another topic and then modify it for the new topic (so snippets don't apply here), it would really be nice to have this issue fixed.  I discovered it after noticing content was missing from the production site that I knew I added to the project, only to find the "undefined" message in the project's code view and then tracking down what was happening.  This is a high priority for me but apparently a pretty low priority for Adobe, possibly because there is a workaround:

If I copy and paste content from one topic into another, select the code view before saving, before the system has had time to catch the duplication and modify it, and copy the content out to Notepad++, I can search on 'drop-down' (and there are two instances for each drop-down, one to identify the drop-down for which to display content when the drop-down is clicked, and one to identify the content to display when that drop-down is clicked), verify each set of values has a unique ID, and then copy it back into the Robohelp project.

Adobe could save me a lot of time and frustration by randomly generating an ID that is unique per project (not per page only) for each new drop-down added to a topic.

Again, sorry if this content isn't helpful for this post and/or was already posted someplace else in this forum.

Jeff_Coatsworth
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 7, 2025

Busted up your "wall 'o text" there for you @Timothy386187870sd3  - interesting hack.

Have you created a report on the Tracker (https://tracker.adobe.com/)? Because that's the only way to get it visible to the RH folks.

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 5, 2025

You are referring to this thread. https://community.adobe.com/t5/robohelp-discussions/drop-down-text-not-displaying-in-html-help-output-using-robohelp-2019/td-p/10761852

 

To the best of my knowledge nothing has changed regarding this issue.  In the previous thread, it was established new dropdowns worked OK. That means your options are to either abandon dropdowns or rebuild them.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

 

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Inspiring
May 5, 2025

Appreciate the response. We are upgrading to RoboHelp 2022 on Wednesday. Grok was used to find some issues with dropdowns that were resolved, so fingers crossed everything works in conversion of Classic. I'm not a fan of the new way to do Drop-down Text, but I'm sure once I've used it awhile it will be fine.

Thank you,



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