Ctrl-Alt in TOC cannot find file

[JayHBar]

I created a book with a cover page, a copyright, and a chapter, and added a TOC. It generated fine. But when I save as PDF, the table of contents in the PDF is not live. The cursor points to an item, but when you click it, nothing happens.

I checked the Frame TOC. When I hold Ctrl-alt, the cursor turns to a hand pointer and I can click on the entry. Then an error message appears that "Cannot find xxx file." The name of the file it lists is exactly the name of the chapter file. The chapter file is still exactly where it was when I created the book. All the files are in the same directory.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Haven’t got any locked files left behind have you? Try opening all the files of the book and update. Then test the ToC links.

[JayHBar]

Hi Jeff,

I opened all the files and then closed them again, saving them, to test if any were unopenable for any reason. All are accessible.

Thanks,

Jh-

[Arnis Gubins]

Have you checked the path to be certain that FM is looking in the correct location?

[JayHBar]

Yes, I've checked. The path is exactly right.

I just copied all the content from the chapter into a new file, imported all the formats from the template again, and added this new file to the book. I deleted the old TOC from the book and deleted the TOC file from the directory. I Added a new TOC. Still the same problem.

[Arnis Gubins]

How did you check for the path? Did you look at the FM hypertext marker content for each of the bad links? You can also check the link Properties in the PDF to see where it thinks it should be going to as well. This might provide some clues as to what's happening.

[JayHBar]

Arnis,

At first, I just looked at the error message that comes up when you Ctrl-Alt and click a link in the TOC. It has the right path. After getting your message, I looked at the hypertext. It only lists the chapter name, not the path, which is the same as for a TOC I have that is working for another document. And anyhow, why would it be pointing to the wrong path when none of the files have been moved since I created the book?

I don't know how to look at the link properties in Acrobat.

jh-

[Arnis Gubins]

In Acrobat, click on the Links tool. This will show all of the links on a page as outlines. Right-click on any of the "broken" ones and select the Properties from the context menu. Then select the Actions tab and look in the Actions box. It should show the full path to the pdf link.

If FM is saying that it can't find a file, then you need to track down where it is looking for it. Another place to look is in the MIF versions.

[JayHBar]

Thanks for the instructions. The action in the PDF link is "Go to another document". The document it lists is the correct one with the correct path, but I checked the TOC in a PDF that does work correctly and the action is "Go to a page in this document."

How does one tell FrameMaker how to set up the hypertext links in the TOC? I've followed the same procedure to create this TOC as I have for many others.

[Arnis Gubins]

It sounds like something is still messed up in the TOC. It might be easier to set it up again.

First, delete the TOC file from the FM book file. Then rename (at the system level) the old existing TOC to something like myBookTOC.fm to myBookTOC_old.fm

Next, add a newTOC to the book using the Add > Table of Contents menu and select your required paratags. Make certain that the hypertext links option is checked.

In the newly created TOC file, test one of the links that didn't work properly before. It should be working (if not, then something is really messed up somewhere else).

Now from the old TOC file, import your formats into the new TOC file. Finally, update the book.

Do the links still work? If so, then try creating the PDF and check the links there.

[JayHBar]

Arnis,

I moved the cover, copyright, and chapter to a whole new directory. I created a new book and saved it into the new directory with the files. I

Added a new TOC, making sure that the hypertext links option was checked.

I tested one of the links. It still says "Can't find xxx/xxx.fm file." although the path and file that it lists is now the new path and file.

Guess something is really messed up somewhere :-). So far, I've copied all the chapter text into a completely new file, saved it as MIF, and reopened it in Frame. I've moved the files to a new directory. I've created brand-new TOCs. I'm not sure what more to do, unless recreate the content of the chapter from scratch in case it has something wrong with it?

Regards,

jh-

[JayHBar]

Oh, and the files have been moved from one computer to another, in hopes that maybe the FrameMaker installation on one computer was messed up somehow. No luck with that, either.

[Arnis Gubins]

Are all the files local to the machine or are they being accessed from a networked drive? Are there any spaces or special characers in the file or folder names? How many levels deep is the folder (counting down from the drive root)?

It sounds weird that a brand new TOC would throw up such an error.

You can try another test using the sample book in the FM home Samples\Overview\Book folder. Just remove & rename the TOC file as before. Add a new TOC and check the link behaviour. If this doesn't throw any "Can't find..." errors, then something is wonky with those specific files.

[Bob_Niland]

> Are there any spaces or special characers in the file or folder names?

And commas, of all things.

On Windows, FM has trouble printing to filenames that have commas in any fragment of the file path.

Still not fixed as of FM9.

[JayHBar]

The directory and the file names both had a year and a version number with a period: 2013.1, in them. I've used this convention on numerous other documents with no problem, but removing those made these files work. Thanks to everyone who helped me with this problem.

[JayHBar]

A new twist in the plot--yesterday I opened a RoboHelp project that I'd completed 5 months ago. It was generating the CHM fine then. With no changes, the CHM generation failed. I did a few things like deleting the CPD file and then thought of trying to change the path name. It worked. I had periods in both the FrameMaker and RoboHelp cases, e.g., 2013.1 and 2013.2, and changing those to underscores fixed the problem. Guess some update has been made to the Adobe Technical Communication Suite that changed how it handles file/path names, or maybe Windows changed something.

Again, thanks to all of you for helping me troubleshoot this problem. You ended up saving me a lot of time on both my FrameMaker and my RoboHelp projects.

jh-