RH2020 Spell Check stops at every topic even if no misspelled words

[Amy22505674ontr]

I am using spell check in RoboHelp 2020 in a large project with over 400 topics. I have Spell Check set to Look in All Topics. When I select Run Spell Check, RoboHelp opens every topic, checks spelling, and stops whether there is a misspelled word or not. I have to select Skip on every topic. Is there a way to set it up so that it only opens and stops in topics with misspelled words? If there is no misspelled word, I would like it to move on to the next topic and not have to select Skip each time.

I have Application Preferences set to check Run spell checking on opening a topic, but I'm not sure if that affects this or not.

[Peter Grainge]

As far as I can see it is only showing topics with misspelt words. After running through a topic it is reporting what is wrong in them and giving me the options to skip, ignore or add the words reported. Initially on opening a topic it shows as None but that changes to what it has found. I have not found it stick on a topic with no misspellings.

Do you have Update 6 applied?

________________________________________________________
See www.grainge.org for free Authoring and RoboHelp Information

[Amy22505674ontr]

I am using version 2020.6.76. I see that sometimes it jumps from like 409 file(s) to check, then I select Skip, then it shows 406 file(s) to check and skips a couple. But the majority of topics open and show Misspelt Word <None>. It does find and show a few acronyms and words it doesn't recognize in a topic here and there, so it is checking the topic. But the majority of topics are showing none. Other users on my team are experienceing the same thing. I maintain several large projects spell check works the same way in those as well.

Also, is there a way to close all topics at once, rather then having to close each topic individually after a spell check?

[Peter Grainge]

The last part is easy. Right click on a tab and choose Close All.

To be quite sure, RoboHelp opens a topic and shows None but if you give it a moment or two that does not change, correct? I cannot recreate that. It shows None on opening a topic but after just a couple of seconds it shows the errors just above the Skip, Ignore and Add buttons.

Can you share the project? If you can, then see the Contact page on my site and send the project as instructed there. Do make sure you include a link to this thread and please do not email the project direct. If not, then I can only suggest Support as it is working fine here.

I assume you tried one of the sample projects? Another thought is are you running the project on a network or locally? Maybe try locally if on a network.

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

[Amy22505674ontr]

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I am giving it plenty of time to show an error, but none appear. I am working locally, not on a network. I am unable to share any of my projects since they are proprietary. It appears to be some sort of a bug. We will just keep clicking through the topics.

[Peter Grainge]

A bug would affect everyone. I still recommend checking a sample project and then contacting Support.

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

[Tim D Morris]

I am experiencing the same issue (and more), and I am using RH 2022.4.179.  I am trying to use the spell check on all topics.  I have 1011 topics.  The system regularly stops on topics where the system indicates there are no misspellings.  I have to click Skip to continue.  When I had around 500 topics left, RH crashed.  I restarted.  I realized that all the words I added to the dictionary were not saved.  I repeated the process, clicking the save all option regularly and using the Close Others options to periodically close all the topics that were open. RH crashed at about the same place. I restarted. None of the words I added to the dictionary were saved; apparently, clicking the Save button does not apply to the dictionary.  Using the gear icon at the top of the spell check page, I manually added as many words to the dictionary as I could remember, saved, and closed the project.  I repeated this process several times.  I was able to reach the point of having about 385 topics left to spell check, at which point RoboHelp still crashed and I was unable to proceed. The Look in All Topics option always appears to start in the same place. If I try to resume from the last topic I noted before the crash occurred, open that topic, and click the Look in All Topics option, the system restarts with the first topic.  As a result, I don't see a way to use the Look in All Topics option to finish spell checking the remaining 385 or so topics.

I suspect the system is stopping on topics that have no spelling errors when there is something else in the code on the page that the spell check does not like.  I removed all the NBSP tags from a topic. That alone had no impact.  I use a lot of DHTML hotspots. In older versions of RH, the system used a popup + random number to identify each hotspot plus a block of code at the bottom of the page.  I removed that content from one of the topics, and the system no longer stopped on that topic.  I have hundreds of topics that still have the old popup + random number coding (which was later replaced by the less effective drop-down + sequential incremented number coding.  It would be cost-prohibitive for me to manually try to replace all the old popup numbering with the new drop-down numbering.

The system is also making me add items to the dictionary (or press Skip a lot of times) to get past some terms that it doesn't seem as if I should need to add to the dictionary.  In some scenarios (not all) where I have "This is a sentence" (in quotation marks as shown, the system is identifying "This and sentence" as spelling errors.  If I have an asterisk (*) in front of a word like *This, the system is making me add *This to the dictionary (or again click Skip for each occurrence).

Additionally, I think the system is now skipping topics I did not intend for the system to skip.  There were a few times when I clicked the Skip button to the right of the topic's file name instead of the Skip button below the misspelled word.  If that action suppresses spell checking on that topic in the future, is there a way to undo it?

Finally, the system is regularly showing no misspellings when I skip and go to the next topic, but then starting the process of loading the topic view.  If I see no misspellings and click Skip before the process of loading the next topic starts, the system finishes loading the next topic, may display the first misspelling if one exists, and then immediately jumps to the next topic because I had already clicked the Skip button, not realizing the page hadn't finished loading yet.  If I click Skip to advance to the next page and the page isn't finished loading, it seems as if the Misspellt field should be blank and the Skip button should not be enabled until the page is finished loading.

I have the same preference set to run spell check upon opening a topic.  I have noticed a significant time delay in the system's ability to identify a misspelled word (one of the reasons I decided to try to run the spell check on all the topics).

I know that was a lot.  Sorry.  Open to any suggestions on how to proceed.  Thanks!

[Amy22505674ontr]

Tim, That sounds similar to the issue I was having; however, my project never crashed or flagged correctly spelled words. I am on 2022.3.93 and am still having a similar experience where spell check stops on topics with no misspelled words and will not continue on it's own.

In 2022, I reported my issues and demonstrated it to Adobe. They were able to recreate it and agreed that it was a bug. I thought I saw a spell check fix in a subsequent RoboHelp update, but I cannot find the older release notes on their site. It is a cumbersome tool and an odd way to do spell check.

I have resorted to generating output as a PDF, opening as a WORD document, and using the WORD spell check. I also have some very large topic count projects so I have to generate a few hundred topics at a time to get WORD to handle such a large document. Word doesn't convert some things like hyphens well so I have to skip over those flags in Word. But Word does catch more misspellings much faster than RoboHelp. Hope this helps, Amy

[Peter Grainge]

This is where to find fixes. Issues fixed in Adobe RoboHelp. 

________________________________________________________

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

[Tim D Morris]

I added Adobe Bug Report:

RH-12457

My topics include a lot of drop spots. If the spell check encounters a topic where a spelling error is detected in collapsed text, the system will stop on that topic because it contains a spelling error, but it will not expand the drop spot and highlight the misspelled word and it will show Misspellt Word = None.  If I expand the topic's text, switch "Look in" to "Current File" and perform the spell check, the system highlights the next error in the text and populates the Misspellt Word field with the error (just as it would have if the error had not occurred within collapsed text).  If I proceed to resolve issues with the file, save changes, and then restart the search from the beginning, the system no longer stops on that topic.  Note: This scenario may not be the only one that causes the system to stop on a topic without showing a misspelled word, but it did work to resolve all the issues in one of my smaller projects. I can now run the spell check on all topics and have the system not stop on any topic.

[Amy22505674ontr]

Thanks Tim. Good tip! I have quite a few drop texts as well. Still a wonky workflow.

[Tim D Morris]

I added another related bug: 

RH-12459

In this bug, I identified eight additional scenarios that will sometimes (or always) cause the system to stop on a topic that contains a "detected" error (that may not really be an error) and to leave the Misspellt Word field set to "None".  I have been able to see the spell check work fairly efficiently with some of my newer, smaller projects, but I am having to depend on MS Word a lot to troublshoot issues in older and/or larger projects.