Robo Help hangs when I open word

[gchandu]

Hi,

I am not able to open one particular document(word) in Robo help. The rest of the documents opens and am able to work with it. But as soon as i open this document, robo help hangs. Am not sure why this is happening.... It is critical document. I have to update and publish on the web. I find this strange. Infact i tried running this from a different drive but no luck. Please provide me solution for this.

Robo help version X5
Word: MS word 97
OS : XP

Regards
Chandrika

[Peter Grainge]

Welcome to the forum.

First create a copy of your project so that you can go back to it if things don't work out.

Delete the RTF version of the file that is giving trouble from one copy and open the project. RH will complain. Allow it to rebuild the RTF. That MAY fix the problem.

[gchandu]

Thanks for the quick response Grainge.

I deleted the rtf file and opened the RH project. When it is trying to build the rtf i get this error message and the rft file is not built further. I was getting the same error message when i closed the hanged document.

" RoboHelp Explorer can't complete this action because RoboHelp is working or has a dialog box open. Please switch to Robohelp, close any open dialogs and try again."

I dont have any dialogue box open either. What do I do now?

Regards
Chandrika

[Peter Grainge]

Doubt it will make a difference but have you rebooted since this started to happen?

First thing now is not to go anywhere near the untouched backup. You can create further copies but keep an untouched copy.

I haven't used RH for Word for a long time. Deleting the RTF was often a quick and easy way to fix things but beyond that it's difficult to say.

Do you have a backup of the document before it started giving grief?

Have you tried double clicking the document to force it to open RH? (Doubtful but worth a try).

Try opening a copy of the document on a non RH PC.

Try importing the document into a new project.

Sorry, just tossing out ideas. Post back if nothing works.

[Captiv8r]

Hi all

Like my fellow Adobe Community Expert Peter, I long ago abandoned RoboHelp for Word too. However, I seem to recall a trick for Word users. Try opening the document in Word. Display the paragraph markers and select all the text with the exception of the last paragraph marker. Copy that to the Wiindows Clipboard. Now open a new Word document and paste from the clipboard.

I have no idea if that will help in this situation, but may be worth trying. I believe it was said to cure a number of "Word ills".

Cheers... Rick

[gchandu]

Hi Peter,

Sorry for the late reply. Was on a long festival holiday and now back to work.

I have rebooted my system many number of times but it is not working. I tried opening the same document from backup copy as well. It doesn't open up. It hangs. I created a new project and tried to import this document. Iam unable to import the document as well. I get the same error message which i had posted earlier (" RoboHelp Explorer can't complete this action because RoboHelp is working or has a dialog box open. Please switch to Robohelp, close any open dialogs and try again.").

Strange thing is if i open this document without RoboExplorer open it opens in a word document and i can edit and save it. But if i open it from the explorer it hangs and and get this error message:( . So this shows that it is not a problem with word. Don't you think so?

I think the back up copy also has a problem. Before taking the back up, I had installed Robohelp 7 in my system, it was not working as word version was too old (word97) hence reverted back to X5. Yes after reinstalling X5, i took a backup and i had not worked on this document.

When i tried opening this document couple of days before it started troubling me. Only this document is behaving strange rest of the documents opens and i can edit and save them.

Do you think uninstalling Robohelp7 and reinstalling X5 could be the problem? If this is the problem all the documents should hang isn't it? Since the back up is also not working, am planning to uninstall and reinstall X5. Do you think this is a good idea? Or is there any other resort?

PS: Robohelp was installed and uninstalled by our System Admin.

I tried following the steps given by another senior member (Captiv8r) but no go :(.....

[Peter Grainge]

Open a good document from RH and in Word go to Templates and Add-ons. Note the path of the template.

Now open the rogue document any way you can. Check the path there. If not the same, try pasting it from the good one to the rogue one.

No idea if it will work but worth a try.

Have you run a virus check on this document? Again doubtful but worth a try.

[bawd]

Still stuck? I've an idea that although Rick was going in the right direction perhaps he didn't go far enough. It often seemed that there was some hidden at the end of the text that screwed things up, and deleting just the para mark didn't find it. Try this (in desperation...):

Make a note of the last five or six words at the end of the topic. (Don't COPY the text - you're trying to eliminate the unseen!) Then delete those words from the topic and re-type them. Keep fingers crossed. Good luck!


Brian

[gchandu]

Hello All,

Finally i could get back on track. I deleted the rogue document from the project completely, did a virus scan and imported a back up copy. Now its working. Thanks to all of you. Thanks Peter.
The problem was with the word doc not the Robo explorer.

Regards
Chandrika