Search function not working. I have upgraded from RH8 to RH11 (WebHelp), now search function brings no results, 'Error: Failed to initialize database' appears.

I experienced something similar with our help, which was generated using RH9. The help works fine in IE9, but gets a little flaky in newer versions of IE. In IE11, the RH help search function says 'Error: Failed to initialize database.' If I go ahead and do a search anyway, it just returns 'null.'

Upgrading the help project to RH2015 seems to have solved the problem.

HTH,

G

I experienced the same error with the Search function not working in help compiled using RoboHelp 2015. I uninstalled and reinstalled RoboHelp, but that did not fix the problem. I was finally able to fix the problem by installing MSXML 4.0 Service Pack 2 and MSXML 4.0 Service Pack 3 Parser on my laptop.

Hello William and Surbhi thank you for responding. I have excluded all manner of baggage files and republished. When I click Search, the same error message 'Error: Failed to initialize database' appears. When I look at the generated output: in the whxdata folder, should there be a file with a topic list? When I compare it with the generate from my old RH8, there was a file topictable.xml and topictableindex.xml. I will now have our IT department reinstall the program and see if it solves the issue.

Hi,

Do you have any baggage files in your project?

Try excluding the baggage files from search indexing before publishing the output.

I have highlighted this setting in the image below:(WebHelp> Properties)

Give it a try and let me know how it goes.

Also, On which browser are you facing this issue?

Thanks and Regards,
Surbhi Maheshwari

Did you also try the suggestions as set in the thread? (Installing/Reinstalling some software?)

The easiest to try is to uninstall and reinstall RoboHelp.