Inspiring

Question

RoboHelp 10: Problems generating Printed Documentation

Forum|Forum|12 years ago
October 16, 2013
1 reply
5385 views

Environment

Windows 7 Enterprise, Service Pack 1, 64-bit operating system

Office Professional Plus 2010 Versions 14.0.7106.5001 (64-bit)

RoboHelp 10: 10.0.0.287

Visual Studio 2010 Professional. I open RoboHelp from within Source Control (have been doing it for two years).

Problem

Sometime after moving to RoboHelp 10, and even after successfully generating Printed Documentation output, I encountered a major problem generating Printed Documentation from RoboHelp: “Internal error encountered. Failed to generated Printed Documentation”. The error occurred when I tried to generate Printed Doc using my default TOC, which looks something like this:

Topic A

Topic B

Book 1

Book 2

Book 3

Topic C

Topic D

Based on an old Peter Grainge reply to someone about a similar problem, I removed all but the first topic from the Chapter Layout pane and generated the Help. Everything was fine until I got to the topics after Book 3. At that point everything started to fail again. When I removed Topics C, D, etc. from the Chapter Layout pane, the output was built successfully.

I tried moving Topics C, D, etc. to the top of the Chapter Layout pane, and got the same error. I tried creating a new folder and put Topics C, D, etc. into that folder. Failure after failure.

As an experiment, I removed all the Topics C, D, etc from the Chapter Layout pane, but then added them to the Print Document Section Layout pane (not where I want them). The Printed Documentation built successfully.

During attempts to build with Topics C, D, etc. in the Chapter Layout pane, I kept getting a Word error: Word is trying to recover your information. After that there was always a failure.

Selecting PDF as the output did not work when the Topic C, D, etc. files were at the bottom of the Chapter Layout pane.

I create a new TOC and a new Printed Documentation SSL. Failed to generate.

As a matter of reference, I've been generating Printed Documentation from the same TOC for more than a year and so cannot figure out what has changed in RoboHelp or Word to cause this grief .

Has anyone experienced anything like this?

Carol

This topic has been closed for replies.

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

Does it work with one of the sample projects?

A

AIR-ChayahAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks for your reply, Jeff.

Yes, I created an "online manual", copied several single topics to the bottom of the Chapter Layout pane, and generated PDF and Word successfully.

However, I'm not sure that the test is valid: While I created this sample project locally, I work in my project in Source Control. In addition, the sample project contains significantly fewer files than are in my project.

Two of the quirks in my project are:

I can generate the Word Printed Documentation for my project as long as I don't include the single topics that typically reside at the bottom of the TOC in the Chapter Layout pane.
I can generate the Printed Documentation when I include those single topics from the bottom of the TOC in the Section Layout pane.

For a while I thought that it was because the "Critical error of Source Control Provider. Please restart IDE." message was hiding behind the application and I couldn't get to it fast enough to click OK. When you don't realize the message is hiding out on you, RoboHelp just sits there, waiting, and you end up thinking that it's crashed.

Since I'm also getting the "Microsoft Word is trying to recover your information" message (which I did not get with the sample project), I thought it might be a Word problem, perhaps related to the documentation template that is our default. But that makes no sense considering that I can build the Printed Documentation based on the two quirks above.

Carol

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Haha, young Mr. Grainge! Sorry about the misplaced modifier.

Yes, I built the Printed Documentation without including those topics in the Chapter Layout pane. I also built the Printed Documentation with those topics by selecting them in the Section Layout pane. And at one point the other evening I built the whole thing with those pesky files at the top of the pane.

This morning I checked out all the files and attempted to generate "Printed_Documentation_for_Tech_Review" with the entire TOC structure. The pesky files are from "Abbreviatioons" on. Internal error, failed to generated Printed Documentation.

I removed the files from "Abbreviations" on, from the Chapter Layout pane. Printed Documentation was built successfully.

I added "Abbreviations" to the Chapter Layout pane as the last topic in the "Administration Console" book. Failed to generate.

I moved "Abbreviations" to the top of the Chapter Layout pane. Failed to generate.

I moved "Abbreviations" to the Section Layout pane. Built successfully, which leads me to believe that there is nothing wrong with the file.

The build failure is always proceeded by the following Word error message. I'm hard pressed to believe that this is a Word problem since the build works for all the other topics and for "Abbreviations" when it's part of the section layout.

FYI, "Abbreviations" is a very simple topic.

The Word output is 307 pages.

I just copied "Defining Complex Filters" to the "Working with Projects" book in the Chapter Layout pane and it built successfully! I had left "Abbreviations" in the Section Layout pane for this generation.

I've now removed "Abbreviations" and regenerated with "Defining Complex Filters" still in place and it has built successfully.

I added "Abbreviations" to the "Working with Projects" book in the Chapter layout and RoboHelp is now spinning its wheels "updating images". I am going to have to Ctrl+Alt+Del the application and will probably have to restart my computer .... RH will think that the output is still being used unless I restart the computer .

When I'm up again, I'll try adding other topics (not "Abbreviations") to the "Working with Projects" book and see what happens.

Carol

You left this thread at a point where you were going to try again later. Does your silence indicate progress?

If not, can you take a copy out of source control and send it to me. 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.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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