Published version not matching the generated version

[GeoffreyMarnell]

I make modifications to a few topics, click Generate to view the reults. They are as I expected: they match my changes. I then publish the project. But the changes are not reflected in the published version. RH seems to have picked  up an earlier version of the project, in a different folder (which I can see immediately because I had changed some heading colours since that last version.) What on earth is going on!

[Peter Grainge]

Have you tried refreshing the browser tab? It sounds like a cache issue. Also try a different browser.

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

[GeoffreyMarnell]

Hi Peter. Thanks, but I tried that (Firefox, Chrome, cache-free). Strangley enough,  when I transfer the GENERATED files and the PUBLISHED files to a second computer (where both sets of files were created minutes apart with no content changes in the interim), the GENERATED files showsthe up-to-date content and the PUBLISHED files are still a version or so ago!

What is the difference between generating and publishing? All I'm truly concered about is giving the client a workable set of files at the end of the project. SInce the set of files produced by GENERATE seem to be fine, are up-to-date and open in numerous browsers, can I just bypass the publishing step altogether and just hand over generated files?

TIA

[Amebr]

Generate builds the help output using your source files. Publish copies the generated output to a different location (webserver or network location, usually).

You say "when I transfer the GENERATED files and the PUBLISHED files to a second computer ". As I mentioned earlier, publishing would normally go to a webserver, or to a network share, not a local folder. Where are you generating to and where are you publishing to initially (check in your output preset for both paths)? Perhaps  you are not publishing to the location you think?

[GeoffreyMarnell · Accepted solution]

Thanks. I wasn't aware that the only difference between generate and publish was the location. (I imagined that publishing compresses files etc. etc.). I have the output from both generate and publish going to local folders, and I can tell by the time-stamp that I am comparing the right files but …

… I think I may have solved a couple of problems that have ben plaguing this particular project (starting with seeing two identically named topics when I search for a topic to link to). It looks like I was dragging an  earlier project folder  and mistakenly dropped it on top of the current folder for the project. Thus I had a copy of the entire (earlier) project inside the contents folder of the (current) project. Thus an exercise to link went looking for the topic in the tep-level Contents folder and found it at two levels. In the meantime, some additions were being made (by me) to the embedded earlier version annd the current version (without realising). I've now ditched the embebdded version, updated content where necessary and fixed broken links (i.e. links to the wrongly embedded project). Not only has this fixed the topic-duplication issue, but it's fixed the generate–publish inconsistency issue. What a palaver … thanks to a buggered drag-and-drop!

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

When in doubt, delete the files that you've generated/published, and start anew!

[Amebr]

I'm glad you sorted it out 🙂

(When RH2019 was first release I managed to drag and drop the entire RH UI into a topic. Luckily it was only a test project and Adobe fixed that problem pronto. 😄 )