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Question

TOC not opening to the selected topic

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
September 20, 2022
42 replies
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We have a RoboHelp 2020 help project posted on our website. We have links to topics in the help project from other places on our website. For the URL in the link, we use the URL displayed in the address bar when the desired help topic is displayed, such as:

http://hsv.ternion.com/Documentation/flames21.0/WebHelp/flames/index.htm#t=SAS%2FCreating_a_User.htm

(Note that Creating_a_User.htm is in a folder named SAS.)

This works. The correct topic is opened in our help project when the link is selected. However, the TOC of our help project is not expanding to the proper place (to the entry associated with SAS/Creating_a_User.htm). Instead, the TOC is opening to some random place not associated with the topic.

Has anyone else experienced this issue, and do you know how to fix it?

New UI

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Does the silence indicate you have fixed the issue? If you have, I would very much like to know what was causing the problem.

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deniseh47762385Author

Known Participant

I'm sorry for the delay. I didn't get to spend much time on this today as I have other more urgent tasks that I need to do while my manager is on vacation this week. Here are the answers to your previous questions:

1] Is the setup here merged help in the true sense as in Merged Help (grainge.org) or just a series of outputs that have links to each other?
NO merged help, just different outputs with links to each other.

2] All the relative path option does is dictate where the preset gets generated. It has nothing to do with links to another preset or project.
OK

3] Are all the outputs from different presets in the same project or are they the outputs from different projects?
There were other unused presets in the same project (doc, pdf etc but we weren't using them so I deleted them in this project and will remove them in the other projects too.

4] WebHelp is just a folder name if I understand you correctly and it is not a reserved term.
WebHelp is a folder name (and was preset name). However, I beg to differ that it's not a reserved word due to my tests* (see below).

5] How many presets are there in this large project?
There used to be 4 I think (like the other smaller projects that have no problems).

6] If the answer is one, then why do you and your boss need the relative path option?
We need to be consistent whether we're using C or D drive, relative/absolute. I will discuss with him when he's back from vacation.
Your 'Responsive HTML5 Output' topic says: "If there are multiple authors and/or you work on more than one machine in a non source controlled environment, then the relative path option may suit you better."

Results from testing:

10/3/22 D drive
D:\Development\doc-flames-git - Copy
removed all Presets except WebHelp (did not rename), left relative
../WebHelp/flamestest/ - good TOC
../WebHelp/flames/ - bad TOC
../DocHelp/flames/ - good TOC

10/4/22 C drive
C:\Development
../DocHelp/flames/ - good TOC
../WebHelp/flames/ - bad TOC
C:/Development/DocHelp/flames - good TOC
C:/Development/WebHelp/flames - bad TOC

C:\ - didn't try today but should be the same

Should we move docs to C or leave on D and change to DocHelp? If Brad and I use same C or D drive project/generated locations, we should use absolute path.

IF we do change Webhelp folder name, will need to change topics source links - Find and Replace.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Please leave all side issues until we have resolved the main issue. This thread is already messy enough. 🙂

1] Is the setup here merged help in the true sense as in Merged Help (grainge.org) or just a series of outputs that have links to each other?

2] But more importantly, the multiple generated help files need to be relative too with a parent folder (we called WebHelp under a release folder).

All the relative path option does is dictate where the preset gets generated. It has nothing to do with links to another preset or project.

3] Are all the outputs from different presets in the same project or are they the outputs from different projects?

4] WebHelp is just a folder name if I understand you correctly and it is not a reserved term.

5] How many presets are there in this large project?

6] If the answer is one, then why do you and your boss need the relative path option?

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

If you can't get it resolved with Adobe today, send the project. I might not be able to look in depth tomorrow but will have a quick look. Can look more on Wednesday.

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Here I am back at my desk and no project to look at!

BTW. Are you saying that in the Contents panel all 2,500 topics are in one folder with no structure, only the TOC provides structure?

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deniseh47762385Author

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Sorry, I was out on Friday, Sep 30 for my birthday. Late on Thursday, I did call Adobe and got help from Ananda. He resolved the issue with a new Output Preset (I already tried that) and generated files to C:\test. He said "local drive" should be C and not my D drive (I thought my D was local too but apparently Microsoft doesn't work that way?) Since we use relative path for generated files, I will need to pull new Git repos to C:\Development, and generate the files on another C folder. I did not try all this before I left so I will get it all set up very soon and will post when/if everything is all good. Let's keep this thread open until I am 100% sure it's all working. Thanks!

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

@Jeff_Coatsworth suggested C drive a way back. It is not correct to say you cannot generate to the D drive as I do it all the time but my projects are on the D drive. That said, it should also be OK to generate to any local drive. Subject to network speed, Adobe state you can generate to a network drive.

I wonder if your old preset would work if you changed from Use Relative Path. If you have time to test that, it might suggest a bug in that feature that came in with 2020.

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Please use WeTransfer, not email.

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Send it today, I will look Monday. See my Contact page.

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A

Amebr

Community Expert

These meta tags are from classic in case that helps and should have no effect on the table of contents:

I don't know where the topic-id one comes from though. I couldn't get it to appear in Classic despite setting every property I could think of.

deniseh47762385Author

Known Participant

Thanks, everyone for your responses. I've been busy with software testing and my normal CS/Sales work so I'm back to this today (off tomorrow). Creating an Auto-TOC works fine but who has a flat TOC? I did notice that in our large main project, we do have up to 8 TOC sectinos/levels; is that just too much? There's not enough time to recreate the entire TOC since we have over 2500 files, many file folders, and tons of sections/books. I remember somewhere in RH9 that you could specify the number of levels but I can't find anything in 2020.

I never did receive a response from an email I sent to Adobe. I will try to call them.

Peter, if you have time next week, I could send you my project to you and you could see what's happening. We are down to the crunch line now; need a release within 3 weeks. TIA!

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Editing the file could be very time consuming and open to error. Personally I would create a new one via the UI.

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deniseh47762385Author

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I wasn't going to edit the .toc file. I was asking if I should strip all the extra <meta info from each topic if it's not needed.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Sorry, I missed your point. Whilst some could probably be removed, personally I wouldn't be stripping them out. I doubt they are the issue.

If you do, make sure you have a good backup in place first.

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

The fix for filenames showing instead of topic title is right click the topic, select Properties and then click Apply.

As to a new TOC, forget the order. The main objective is to see if your TOC is corrupt in some way. All you are needing to do at this stage is get the topics into a new TOC and not worry about the order.

You can try autocreate first just to see if that works. If it doesn't it could be something in just one folder. Drag one or two folders at a time and leave them in alphbetical order for now. Generate each time. If autocreate failed, then at some point so will this method. It will however tell you where the problem is. Then it can be fixed and the order put right. Order does not matter for the purposes of finding the problem.

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deniseh47762385Author

Known Participant

I think I've boiled down the issue and I have some of the TOC issues solved but I keep finding more.

Some of these topics were copied and the old html code pointed to the wrong topic-id!! I'm sure that's the main issue with the TOC.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="topic-status" content="In Progress" />
<meta name="topic-priority" content="0" />
<meta name="topic-time-estimate" content="0" />
<meta name="topic-comment" content="" />
<meta name="topic-id" content="OVS\Example_Models.htm" />
<meta name="generator" content="Adobe RoboHelp 2020" />
<title>FLAMES Content</title>
<link rel="StyleSheet" href="../assets/css/On-line Styles.css" type="text/css" />
</head>
<body>

I created a brand new topic and only these 3 meta items existed.
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="generator" content="Adobe RoboHelp 2020" />
<meta name="topic-status" content="Draft" />

I don't think we even need the "topic-status" since we don't use that (some are Draft, In Progress etc.). We just add TODO in the topics that need updates.

Some very old converted RH9 topics also had dates:
<meta name="date" content="09 24, 2001 11:46:29 AM" />

Should I remove all the unnecessary meta info from the topics? I think only these 2 are needed:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="generator" content="Adobe RoboHelp 2020" />

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Do you have all updates applied? I doubt that's it but let's get it out of the way.
Is the project local and are you generating to a folder on the same drive?
Are you applying an expression when you generate?
The folder is called webhelp. 2020 does not support webhelp so is this in fact a responsive skin? The icon shown against the preset will show a 5. Try creating a new preset with a new skin. Again I am doubtful this will help but it might help the troubleshooting.
Was this working or is this the first time since going to 2020?
Do you have a backup from when it was working?
Does this happen if you generate the About RoboHelp sample project? Click Open Project and browse to Documents, then My RoboHelp Projects.
Any source control involved?

Sorry but it is going to be a trial and error solution.

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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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deniseh47762385Author

Known Participant

Thank you Peter for all your help now and in the past! Here are the answers to your questions:

1. I applied the latest Update 2020.8.0 this morning.
2. The project is "local" (repo) on my D drive (D:\Development\doc-flames-git) and the output (D:\Development\WebHelp\flames) is on the same drive.
3. We're not applying any expressions when we generate (no Content | Condition Expression).
4. We just named the preset/folder WebHelp but it is Responsive 5 (I see 5 icon on Output Presets). I created a new preset and I noticed the same problem.
5. I'm not sure; we noticed it recently.
6. Although the content has changed, I do have an original copy from the RH9 conversions and it's on a Git repo so we can always go back to an earlier version if needed.
7. I copied the About RoboHelp sample project so it was in the same folder structure as my other RH projects, including the output. I don't have any problems with the TOC there. See Note below.
8. My manager and I both have RH licenses and the files are on a TortoiseGit repo. We Git the latest changes and the files are all on our local drives. Then we Commit/Push the changes to the repo.

I noticed that your outfile files are all lowercase and ours are Proper Case; I don't think that should make any difference but I tried that and the isue still exists.

Note: I thought topic Contents Panel's link to 'The Table of Contents' was bad but the link it going to the same Content Panel topic so it didn't change.

If needed, I can zip up the entire project and send it to you so you could try it out.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

It's a bit busy here between birthday and Golden Wedding Anniversary!

Create a new TOC and just add one folder of topics. Don't worry about the order being wrong. Generate locally and test. Assuming it's OK repeat adding another folder until it goes bang!

________________________________________________________

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

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