Skip to main content
gweng79067705
gweng79067705
Participant
May 3, 2021
Question

RoboHelp 2019 The HTML tag "?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?" is not a valid HTML tag

  • May 3, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 253 views

I am getting this error on several topics in my project: The HTML tag "?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?" is not a valid HTML tag (it does not begin with an alphanumeric character).

I am using RoboHelp 2019 (Classic). I go to Output (SSL) and right-click on Miccosoft HTML Help (Primary Output) and choose Generate.  

 

This is not a new project. I've generated .chm files from this project before. Looking in RoboHelp, the project folders are "empty", however, going to Windows Explorer the files are there.

 

Is there any fix for this error?

 

For reference, this is the HTML code at the top of one of the topics:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta name="template" content="ImproMed.htt" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="topic-check-list" content="Ran Smart Index" />
<meta name="generator" content="Adobe RoboHelp 2019" />

 

 

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    A
    Community Expert
    AmebrCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 4, 2021

    The fact that you aren't seeing any topics in the Project Manager pod indicates something has gone wrong.

     

    Do you have a working backup you can revert to? This would be the easiest fix.

     

    Is the project on you C drive or on a network/cloud drive? Classic projects really don't like being on a network drive. This won't fix your current project, but in future, make sure it's on your C drive, and preferably a short path, like C:/My_Projects.

     

    If you don't have a working backup, it could take some work to repair the project (then we can look at the compile error once that's done.)

     

    This tip is unlikely to work, but you could try it. Just create a new blank folder in the Project Manager pod. Sometimes this can force RH to regenerate it's database and cause missing files to reappear. If the project is large (we're talking a thousand or more files, not a couple of hundred), it might take an hour to regenerate - just wait for the thinking icon to vanish. Once it finishes thinking, either the files will have reappeared, or the trick hasn't worked. In either case you can delete the temporary folder.

     

    If the tip doesn't work and you don't have a working backup, let us know and we can walk through next steps for trying to get your project working.

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices