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A
Anonymous
August 4, 2008
Question

RH Reassigning Template to Topics When I Select Update/Update All/Force Update

  • August 4, 2008
  • 3 replies
  • 928 views
I created a template and assigned it to all of my topics so that they share the same header. Seems to work fine until I right-click over an imported FM book or chapter file and select Update, Update All, or Force Update. RH assigns the "(None)" template to all of the updated topics, forcing me to manually reassign them to the correct template. This gets old fast. Is anyone else trying to use topic templates?

Based on my initial experience with the TCS (degradation of imported graphics, show-stopping patches, poor style mapping, ineffective Technical Support), I'm not impressed with this product. Thankfully, we installed it on a virtual machine, so as not to disrupt our work machines - best decision we ever made. We may have to do a "return to sender" unless we see some quick action on Adobe's part to resolve some of these issues.
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3 replies

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octechwriter
Known Participant
August 5, 2008
Daggins:

You are correct. My company's template has a footer rather than a header. I scrolled down, and sure enough, it was missing from every topic except from the Welcome topic (which is not updated by FM).

Adobe can chock this up as a bug.

You're lucky in that you installed RH on a virtual machine. At least you can work in other applications on your local machine while RH is applying reapplying the template to your topics. RH tends to want to place itself in front of all other applications as it slowly churns.
Z
Z__Bulova
Known Participant
August 5, 2008
Perhaps Adobe has adopted a strategy of having their paying customers to test their product, rather than their paid QA staff. The product is riddled with defects. They also seem to have cut back on technical writers, given the quality of the help for the product and the lack of a printed manual. It has also occurred to me that Adobe has purposefully avoided upgrading the server on this board to prevent people from posting about their problems here. These are the impressions I have formed.

Z.
O
octechwriter
Known Participant
August 5, 2008
I have experienced this same frustrating event. It seems Force Update causes RH to import the FM book all over again, as though you were importing it for the first time. In effect, RH is overwriting the topics that were in place before (the ones with the templates applied to them) with fresh, new ones straight from the FM source files.

To prevent this, use the Update command rather than Force Update. The Template drop-down menu in the topic properties will still say [NONE], but open your topic to view it, and it should still retain the formatting from the template.

Update doesn't take as long to read the FM source files as Force Update does, pus you save yourself the added headache of having to select all of your topics and reapplying the template.

I agree that there are many frustrations in using TCS. I hope Adobe is monitoring these forums and realizing that we won't put up with any more shoddy products or patches.
A
Anonymous
August 5, 2008
That's odd, since it doesn't matter which update option I select (Update, Update All, or Force Update); RH assigns the "None" template. I'm running RH Version 7.02.001.
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octechwriter
Known Participant
August 5, 2008
Sorry. I think I was adding to my reply when you responded . . . . The Template drop-down says [NONE], but the topics retain the formatting of the template anyway. Reapplying the template is probably unnecessary.

I do tend to reapply the templates even though they appear to be okay, but I wait until I'm ready to leave for lunch or until I'm ready to get up for that next cup of coffee.
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