RoboHelp 2019 Classic to 2019 New Project Upgrade

[RoboFan]

Attempting to upgrade a legacy projet from RoboHelp 2017 to RoboHelp 2019 New. Successfully upgraded it from 2017 to 2019 Classic. However, attempting to upgrade from 2019 Classic to 2019 New results in RoboHelp "freezing" on the "Project Upgrade" modal with "Upgrading files..." message. The modal's X and i functions are unresponsive. Hangs like this for 30-60 minutes before I just kill it and start from scratch. My other project upgrades take 10 minutes, maybe.

Note: 2017 and 2019 all have the latest updates installed. (Need to get to 2019 before moving to 2020.)

I've successfully performed this upgrade (2017 to 2019 Classic to 2019 New) for other projects, so clearly there's something in this one that's the issue. Is there a "project upgrade" log file somewhere I can examine to help identify the hangup?

[Amebr]

Not that I know of.

Some things that may or may not help. 

• Delete the .cpd file and check for broken links and missing files in RH2017.
• Everything's on your C drive, yes? If not, move the project there and try again. I would recommend directly off C:, rather than in Desktop or Documents as sometimes those locations are mapped to network drives for backup purposes.
• Check for any odd things in the css - sometimes I've found something completely screwed up, lord knows how, although RH traditionally hasn't liked anything more complex than css v1, which RH Classic doesn't mind but New croaks on because it's not valid.
• Do you have files other than Robohelp topics in the TOC? If yes, you could try removing them from the TOC to see if that helps.

As always, make sure you have a backup. 🙂

[Peter Grainge]

I'm not sure if this is the location this log file but try 

C:\Users\<user-name>\AppData\Local\Temp\RHTMP folder. 

[RoboFan]

Just remembered....but first:

• Deleted the CPD - known long time RH trick; upgrade still fails
• All our projects are run locally from under C or D.
• Tried replacing all CSS from similar projects that upgraded w/o problem; upgrade still fails
• Verified no broken links pre-upgrade
• Peter was correct in the upgrade log location; unfortunately, the log is only created if/after the upgrade successfully completes; so no upgrade log for this project.

I just recalled - I successfully upgraded this project - as a test - using RH 2019 .11 or .12 (I believe it was .12). I believe the .13 upgrade is where it started failing. So, looks like I'm going to have to rollback to the older version and run the upgrade there. Will report back... 

[Peter Grainge]

Do you have update 14 applied in 2019? If not try applying that and then upgrading.

[RoboFan]

Yes - I've been trying it with 14. I found the .12 update/download. Can I install that separately/along side my existing RH2019.14 instance - or do I need to uninstall my entire RH 2019 New completely and then re-install from .12? 

[Peter Grainge]

You would have to uninstall the current version and then install 12. Make sure you have good backups first in case there was a code change that doesn't play nicely with doing this.

[RoboFan · Accepted solution]

Installed RoboHelp 2019.12 (new) and attempted upgrade. Success!

So, something in 2019.13 and 2019.14 doesn't like this particular legacy project. No time to track it down. On to RoboHelp 2020! 

[Peter Grainge]

What was the problem with upgrading direct to 2020 where the upgrade process has been improved?