Robohelp 2020 HTML5 output searching working for some terms but not others

[BeccyH]

Hi guys,

Really strange situation just noticed by one of our users. Searching for certain terms in our help works perfectly - you're immediately shown all topics containing the term. However searching for other terms just shows the loading gif over and over and over... I left it for a good 20 minutes and it's still just showing as loading. Neither search involved any quotations, so it's not related to bug 10143 (recently resolved in update 7).
Any ideas?

thanks in advance,

Beccy

[Peter Grainge]

Have you tried enclosing the search in quotes and is it a complex search term?

How many topics in the project and is it merged help?

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

[BeccyH]

Not complex search terms. To give an example, "catalogue" works perfectly, but "cross-section", "csv", and "continuous" all result in the endless loading gif. "Error" returns 106 topics immediately, so it doesn't feel like a delay in finding the topics. Unsure how many topics in total, I'd guess less than 1,000 (but many hundred, as perhaps indicated from the example above). Yes, it's a merged help... we've actually spoken previously as I'm currently mid-way through turning this into the "perfect" situation of no content residing within the parent. Unfortunately due to a new release of our software, I had to push ahead with a messy version at the moment that has around 15 child projects, but all other content in the parent. It may well be that this is an overhang of that less-than-ideal scenario, however the search terms that do work seem to return topics inside both the parent and child projects without any problem. 

[Peter Grainge]

I am thinking this is a merged help issue, partly because of what you have said and partly because I have recently seen a merge return No Results when there were many. That was a known issue but fixed in Update 7 and in the case I saw, the problem was with 7 applied.

The number of topics can be seen in the topic list report but your guess should be good enough in this case.

Go to any of the projects and duplicate the preset and then change the output folder so that it is generated outside the merge. Then test the terms there and see what happens.

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

[BeccyH]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your replies. I'll keep digging around. Would be very frustrating if this is a general issue with merged projects, as it's really not practical for us to have so much content in a single project.

It seems to be an odd mix of situations. From experimenting, I've also found words that aren't within any topics successfully returning '0 result(s) found'. It just seems completely hit and miss as to whether a term can be searched for, or instead creates this endless loading situation. 
Fingers crossed Adobe add this to the list and are able to resolve it in a future update, I guess!

Kind regards,

Beccy

[Peter Grainge]

Not without more info. I'm not suggesting a single project as a solution, just to test whether it makes a difference.

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

[BeccyH]

Yep, an unmerged version works as expected. It definitely seems to be the merging causing the problem. Unfortunately, as searching is a vital function for our users, I cannot see another option aside from reverting back to a single project. Which is a real shame. 
Thanks again for all your replies. At least I now know a solution, albeit not what I wanted to hear! 

[Peter Grainge]

Quitter. 🙂 That would be an answer but merged help should work.

I have reported the different issue I encountered and I think what we need to do now is tie your issue in.

Would you be willing to share the whole source with me? (offline, not here) I can then tie the two projects together with Adobe as that will give them two test projects that have known issues. If you can, then see the Contact page on my site and send the projects as instructed there. Do make sure you include a link to this thread and please do not email the projects direct.

If that is not possible but you can share with Adobe, let me know and I will see how that can be arranged.

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

[BeccyH]

Haha not quitting, just feeling somewhat defeated! It's a bit of a horrible help where many people have made changes over many years, not all of which were particularly smart changes... It's been many late nights getting to the point I'm at now, and there are still endless issues. 
I'm more than happy to send the source to you, however rather ashamed for you to view all the not-so-good parts! My plan had originally been to completely recreate several of the projects that are, well, a mess quite frankly. There are a great many warnings upon generation, so definitely not ideal as a "test case" for the issue in hand. But as I say, more than happy to send it all through as is. Or I could go ahead with my plan of creating a better version and then send this, although it likely would be about a month until this is complete (as I can only work on it for around 2 days per week). Please let me know which of these would be better for you 🙂

[Peter Grainge]

Send now and I can take a view on the likelihood of the errors being relevant.

No hurry today. 

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

[Peter Grainge]

I have had confirmation from another user of merged help that searching on CSV is working for them so this does seem to be specific to you.

Nonetheless, send the projects in one zip file so that I see how you have them set up.

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

[BeccyH]

Hi Peter,

I've got an update on this issue. I was so ashamed at the state of the help generally that I thought I'd press ahead with a brand new one. I therefore followed standard procedure for a new merged help (created a new parent, created 35 new child projects, created parent ToC merging in child projects, created parent output, and created child outputs in newly created mergedProjects folder) This all generates with no warnings (yay!) I then carefully copied over 10 child projects I was happy with from the current help, leaving 25 child projects with just a first topic. All going well so far. 

In this new (parent) output, I'm now finding I no longer have this issue with the search showing the loading gif forever for certain search terms. So great news there, and I'm hopeful my previous issue was indeed due to the help being such a mess generally. However, although the searches all seem to bring back results, e.g. "26 results found", I've then not got any of the topics listed below. It says "xx results found" and then straight to "showing results 1-20", with none of the topics shown in between. You can click the arrow and it says "showing results 21-26"... but again, it's not actually showing any results whatsoever. I feel confident this is just something small such as a checkbox I've missed in the parent somewhere, but I can't figure it out myself! Any idea what on Earth I've done to cause this?

PS as I know you were interested in the older project where I had the issue of some searches working as expected (and also this then displayed the topics themselves), but other searches just showing an endless loading symbol, I'm still more than happy to send this through to you if wanted. However, as that particular issue has been resolved in this new help, I'm feeling strongly that it was likely due to other issues such as one of the child projects being a very old project upgraded to 2020, with a space in the project title (I know, very poor practice!) and a host of warnings when generated. 

kind regards,

Beccy

[BeccyH]

Okay, ignore that point about the results not showing up - I just came back to the computer 15 mins later and the topics are now all showing. It seems for the locally built help, things are rather slow... it tells me number of topics found immediately but can take up to 5 minutes or so for these to then be listed. 

So altogether, I'm now completely happy our new help will be working, although the current one has this odd issue with certain search terms. 

Thanks so much for all the assistance and reaffirming my love for the merged help option 🙂

[Peter Grainge]

@BeccyH I agree there is no point in looking at the old project as everything points to the issue being its construction. However, keep a copy on ice for now.

You say the slow search results was noticed by one user. Is it working for OK for others? Look into what browser the one user was working with and their machine. Things like that. You can send me that project (source and output) if you want and I will check it here.

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