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ChipM
Known Participant
July 20, 2020
Question

Robohelp 2020 - Stuck At Indexing references

  • July 20, 2020
  • 22 replies
  • 1271 views

So I have read through replies here and tried some things (mostly new small TOC) to no avail. I am attempting to generate Microsoft HTML Help and it sits at Indexing references for 30+ minutes. I am at a loss and of course under a deadline to get this Help system compiled for a major release. I am exporting to the following Output Path...C:\_Help_Output.

 

FYI...I have also attempted to output to Responsive HTML5 and it too gets stuck but when I finally give up and shutdown Robohelp the HTML5 Help appears to be generated and navigable.

FYI #2...I had the same problem in 2019.14 and hoped moving to 2020 might fix it by some miracle but alas...

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22 replies

ChipM
ChipMAuthor
Known Participant
July 20, 2020

I have been maintaing this particular Help system since the Macromedia days, I have generated this Help in almost every Version of Robohelp since X5 and was able to generate it in Version 2019 New UI but an earlier Build than 14, not sure which build though. I just created a new TOC with a single topic and it appears to be stuck on it, although I will give it some more time.

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 20, 2020

There was a fix for one of the issues behind sticking at Indexing References. Since then I have looked at a couple of projects and the issue has been a topic with some code RoboHelp doesn't like.

 

In the last one it was a topic that I think had been pasted in from Word that referred to styles that weren't in the CSS.

 

The only way I think you are going to find the cause is this. You create a new TOC and open it in the Authoring area. Don't worry about creating books, just drag topics or folders from the Contents panel. Try say 10/20% of your topics. Then see if that will generate.

  • If it doesn't start deleting sections from that TOC and generate until it does.
  • If it does generate, add more until it doesn't.

 

When you can pinpoint a topic, we can look at it.

 

I have to ask, if you had this problem in 2019, how did you generate anything?

 

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Inspiring
January 5, 2022

Peter, I can't thank you enough for your insight in this forum. I was having the same issue with my project getting hung up at indexing references when generating, and the method you propose here (incrementally adding topics to a new TOC and testing to see where the error is) was just what I needed. Thank you! 

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 5, 2022

Glad it has helped.

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

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