Robohelp 2020 HTML5 output searching working for some terms but not others

Hi Peter,

I've got an update on this issue. I was so ashamed at the state of the help generally that I thought I'd press ahead with a brand new one. I therefore followed standard procedure for a new merged help (created a new parent, created 35 new child projects, created parent ToC merging in child projects, created parent output, and created child outputs in newly created mergedProjects folder) This all generates with no warnings (yay!) I then carefully copied over 10 child projects I was happy with from the current help, leaving 25 child projects with just a first topic. All going well so far. 

In this new (parent) output, I'm now finding I no longer have this issue with the search showing the loading gif forever for certain search terms. So great news there, and I'm hopeful my previous issue was indeed due to the help being such a mess generally. However, although the searches all seem to bring back results, e.g. "26 results found", I've then not got any of the topics listed below. It says "xx results found" and then straight to "showing results 1-20", with none of the topics shown in between. You can click the arrow and it says "showing results 21-26"... but again, it's not actually showing any results whatsoever. I feel confident this is just something small such as a checkbox I've missed in the parent somewhere, but I can't figure it out myself! Any idea what on Earth I've done to cause this?

PS as I know you were interested in the older project where I had the issue of some searches working as expected (and also this then displayed the topics themselves), but other searches just showing an endless loading symbol, I'm still more than happy to send this through to you if wanted. However, as that particular issue has been resolved in this new help, I'm feeling strongly that it was likely due to other issues such as one of the child projects being a very old project upgraded to 2020, with a space in the project title (I know, very poor practice!) and a host of warnings when generated. 

kind regards,

Beccy

Haha not quitting, just feeling somewhat defeated! It's a bit of a horrible help where many people have made changes over many years, not all of which were particularly smart changes... It's been many late nights getting to the point I'm at now, and there are still endless issues. 
I'm more than happy to send the source to you, however rather ashamed for you to view all the not-so-good parts! My plan had originally been to completely recreate several of the projects that are, well, a mess quite frankly. There are a great many warnings upon generation, so definitely not ideal as a "test case" for the issue in hand. But as I say, more than happy to send it all through as is. Or I could go ahead with my plan of creating a better version and then send this, although it likely would be about a month until this is complete (as I can only work on it for around 2 days per week). Please let me know which of these would be better for you 🙂

Yep, an unmerged version works as expected. It definitely seems to be the merging causing the problem. Unfortunately, as searching is a vital function for our users, I cannot see another option aside from reverting back to a single project. Which is a real shame. 
Thanks again for all your replies. At least I now know a solution, albeit not what I wanted to hear! 

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your replies. I'll keep digging around. Would be very frustrating if this is a general issue with merged projects, as it's really not practical for us to have so much content in a single project.

It seems to be an odd mix of situations. From experimenting, I've also found words that aren't within any topics successfully returning '0 result(s) found'. It just seems completely hit and miss as to whether a term can be searched for, or instead creates this endless loading situation. 
Fingers crossed Adobe add this to the list and are able to resolve it in a future update, I guess!

Kind regards,

Beccy

Not complex search terms. To give an example, "catalogue" works perfectly, but "cross-section", "csv", and "continuous" all result in the endless loading gif. "Error" returns 106 topics immediately, so it doesn't feel like a delay in finding the topics. Unsure how many topics in total, I'd guess less than 1,000 (but many hundred, as perhaps indicated from the example above). Yes, it's a merged help... we've actually spoken previously as I'm currently mid-way through turning this into the "perfect" situation of no content residing within the parent. Unfortunately due to a new release of our software, I had to push ahead with a messy version at the moment that has around 15 child projects, but all other content in the parent. It may well be that this is an overhang of that less-than-ideal scenario, however the search terms that do work seem to return topics inside both the parent and child projects without any problem.