External Text Anchor Not Found -- in files I don't use

[Nedlaw]

Hi. using 17.0.1 on Win 10 to produce a reflowable EPUB.

I get 13 "external text anchor not found" errors when I attempt to produce an EPUB from ID. The problem is that I'm not knowingly referring to these files, there are no hyperlinks in the document, and I generate bookmarks in source when I generate the TOC (the TOC does not seem to be the problem).

Background:

I produced a print book for a client -- very elaborate, many Xrefs etc. Now the client wants an EPUB of the same book. WHILE I AM SURE there are "best practices" for producing both an EPUB and a print version of the same book from the same source files using conditional settings etc., what I chose to do was copy the chapters to a completely new directory (to preserve the original print book). I then created a new book file that referred directly to the chapters in the new directory.

Systematically, I went through each chapter and tracked down all hyperlinks to any external file or location and converted them to text (the author had wanted several, even though a print book is not "hyperlinked"; that was a convenient way to include them and make sure they worked). I confirmed all Xrefs were within the correct directory by checking (and re-doing) each and every one.

When I produce the EPUB, the error messages say

Text Anchor in <the original directory where I copied from\specific file name> is missing: 4

Note that the error is reported not for a file in the current working EPUB I'm trying to produce, but in a file that is not part of the EPUB book.

I have tried to track down these errant text anchors, or rather, the places that supposedly call the text anchors. The epub files are devoid of hyperlinks. All Xrefs lie within the EPUB directory. Nothing should be referring to external files or URLs, and it puzzles me that what's reported is that external files supposedly are missing bookmarks that I'm not aware I'm referring to and that I cannot seem to find the location where I allegedly refer to them.

No doubt I caused this problem myself by copying the files and modifying them rather than finagling some multi-use single-source approach, but I'd still like to figure out how to find and remove these references that I can't find.

Any help? Thanks as always to the community.

-j

PS: There is a similar post for which the solution was to re-run the TOC with "Make Text Anchor at Source Paragraph" turned on. My setting is on and has been, and I've run the TOC several times. Also, there is no reason for the TOC to refer to a single chapter multiple times (thus looking for 1-5 anchors in each of five locations). Maybe there's a GREP that can track these things down by external file name (as reported in the errors)? (GREP is alas not my strong suite.) Thanks!

[Nedlaw · Accepted solution]

Well, Mea Culpa, as usual. I found the issues, and it was both easier and harder than I thought. I will answer my own post for the record.

The answer: There were still Xrefs lurking in the document that I had not corrected, and that still linked to the "old" chapters. (Bottom line. <sigh>)

I found them this way:

• The errors gave me the files that ID thought I was referring to. From that, I knew the text entry by which I referred to the chapter -- app_cell_bio was the appendix Cell Biology, for example.
• I did a simple search for "Cell Biology." At each instance of the Xref, I double-clicked the listing in the Cross-Reference panel. When the link was to one of the "old" chapters in the other directory, ID courteously opened that chapter for me. That was my indication that I had goofed.
• Then I closed that "old" chapter and re-did the reference from scratch. There didn't seem to be an easy way to just rectify the Xref, and there was the danger that I would re-link to the wrong file -- which is why I closed the old chapter when I discovered it.
• There may have been an easier way to find these instances and correct them. I suspect GREP + a script might have helped, but since there were only 13, I worked through them one by one. Finally, the EPUB compiled without generating the text anchor not found errors.

This is not to say that the EPUB came out correct. There seems to be odd text changes (normal to boldface and back, for instance) that are not triggered by anything I know about, and enumerated paragrahs (Chapter 5, for instance) don't show the text that is part of the style (so no "chapter"). But -- if worse comes to worst -- I can hand-tune the CSS files and doctor the HTML.

Another day, another bug fix.