Search in Merged Project Not Working in Update 8

[Ken in DC]

Hello RoboHelp Community,

Search locks up in a merged project in RH 2020 Update 8. Search works fine when I test it on a single word document or project. I know there have been some recent posts related to this issue.  But I have not been able to find a solution for my problem in those posts.

Does anyone have any ideas about how to resolve this issue?

Thank you,

Ken

[Peter Grainge]

Nothing really to offer. It worked fine when I tested in respect of one of the other threads.

Are you generating the parent first?

If you download the Merged Help demo from my site, does the search work in that?

________________________________________________________

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

[Ken in DC]

Hi Peter,

Sorry about the delay. Yes, I did generate the parent first. Unfortunately, my organization's policy does not allow me to download your Merged Help demo or any other software to my machine. 

A little background. We just produced a merged project in Responsive HTML output using RH2020 Update 6. We tested the search function with a handful of words and it worked great. But we soon were made aware that search does not work for other words that we did not test. We have not found a solution to this problem and thought that updating to Update 8 might fix things.  But search did not work at all when I opened the merged project we created in Update 6 and upgraded it to Update 8. I get the search icon continually swirling and coming up with no results. I also tested a simple merged project creating children over again and got the same results. 

I would think that the upgraded merged project that we were getting most words to work when we searched would at least give me that same capability when I upgraded the project.  The were two posts that sound like they were having very similar problems. We have reviewed the posts but have not been able to fix the problems.  We are now going experiment with check/unchecking the different search boxes in the Output set-up to see if that makes a difference.

Any thoughts you might have regarding how to resolve these issues would greatly be appreciated.

Thank you,

Ken

[Peter Grainge]

So the search is working but certain terms throw it rather than not working at all. Can you give some examples?

Is your project local and are you generating to the same drive?

________________________________________________________

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

[Ken in DC]

The search works for some words and not other in the Update 6 merged project we just published. The search works as expected if you search for "pensions" with no quotes. When you search for "telework" with no quotes it indicates there are "5 results found", but the results produced are inaccurate and there are no links to the results. In addition, we searched the PDF version and know "telework" appears more than 5 times.

The live merged project is on the network. But I have copied it onto my machine and am getting the same results.

The above is for the current version of the RH2020 we use, Update 6.  Search does not work at all in merged projects for us in RH2020 Update 8, which I am testing now.

I hope this helps.

Ken

[Peter Grainge]

Could telework be in dropdowns, a table or something like that?

Look at the words in source view for differences. 

Try generating to a new local folder. 

Sorry I don't have a definite answer. Beyond the above, try Support. 

See https://helpx.adobe.com/contact/enterprise-support.other.html#robohelp for your Adobe Support options. The email link tcssup@adobe.com is recommended as it reaches a team dedicated to Technical Communication Suite products including RoboHelp.

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

[Ken in DC]

After a lot of testing, I finally figured out and fixed the search problem. First Topic files are created in RoboHelp when you generate both child and parent projects. As I tyipcally do, I just deleted the files in both the Content and TOC in the child projects within RoboHelp. For the Parent project, deleting the First Topic in RoboHelp during set-up will prevent the search funtion from working. The "assets" folder in the merged output no longer appear. I leave the First Topic alone during project set-up and delete the First Topic HTML file from the merged output folder after the child/parent project is generated. It took a while to figure this out. But the work-around and search now works.

[Peter Grainge]

I don't know your structure or where you are deleting but I just generated a parent where the TOC only has the child projects in it. As a result anything in the parent will not be generated. The output contained the assets folder.

You are deleting topics, I am not. I just don't generate them. Could that be the issue?

________________________________________________________

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

[Ken in DC]

What do you do with the First Topics that get automatically generated by RoboHelp?  If I don't delete them they will get generated and show up in my HTML output. Deleting this First Topic is the usuually the first step I take after the project is created and before linking the Word document. 

[Peter Grainge]

I delete them but topics only get generated if they are in the TOC.

You can leave them but there's no point, just make sure you don't have them in the TOC. 

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

[Peter Grainge]

Looking at this again, in one post you say you were deleting First Topic. Elsewhere you said I leave the First Topic alone during project set-up and delete the First Topic HTML file from the merged output folder after the child/parent project is generated. 

I wonder if that is part of the problem. In Classic versions you could generate the merge and then you could remove one or more child projects. That was useful if different customers needed different combinations. The search would still work. Now if you remove a child project from the output, it breaks the search. I wonder if deleting a topic is having a similar effect?

That said, when you generate the parent that should have no effect on whether or not an assets folder is created. As I said in another post, generating an output from the parent with only the child projects and no parent topics still generated an assets folder for me.

Could the failure to generate the assets folder be a one off? Try generating the whole thing to a new folder.

________________________________________________________

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

[Ken in DC]

My apologies for the delay in responding. I wanted to test everything and make sure I was getting everything correct.

First, I want to say that the solutions and work-around I am about to share works. I am not sure why. But search now works.

I took your advice and only deleted the First Topic files from the children TOC and NOT from the Content. But the big discovery was how Update 8 was treating the First Topic files in the parent. If I deleted it during set up, search stopped working.  Therefore, I did not delete the First Topic files from the parent at set-up in the TOC or Content. I was incorrect in my proposed solution earlier when I indicated I could delete the First Topic HTML file from the parent or merged output folder. Thank you for pointing that out. It turns out I can delete the file, but the First Topic still remains in the navigation pane at the top of the menu. I could not figure out how to delete it. Therefore, I renamed the First Topic to make it our manual cover page and it all works now. 

On another note, we just published a manual using the child/parent method using RH2020 Update 6. We found out the hard way that search did not work for certain words (telework) when someone notified us. We created the parent again and did not delete the First Topic.  Search now works for all words (telework), until we are notified it does not.  

Thank you for your input and helping find this solution.  I appreciate it.

[Peter Grainge]

I will set up a 2020.8 merge from scratch as soon as I can. During the process I will delete First Topic from each project and create new topics, some of which will include "telework" in the content.

You said It turns out "I can delete the file, but the First Topic still remains in the navigation pane at the top of the menu". Can you show an image of that please? Please use the photo icon to insert images within the post. 

________________________________________________________

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

[Amebr]

@Peter Grainge For the parent project, what has to be set as the Default Topic? I think by default for a new project it will be 'First Topic', right? For merged in Classic I think we needed to set up a redirect topic, but I'm not sure what the case is for New UI. But the default topic might explain why Ken couldn't get rid of 'First Topic' even though they deleted it.

[Ken in DC]

Hi Peter, My default topic in my parent is now the First Topic. But I only made the First Topic the Default Topic after I decided to use it as the cover page because I could not delete the First Topic from the navigation pane. "Telework" was a word that could not be found in the Update 6 search. It was the first Word we identified that could not be found, but there were more. We tested the search before we published using 5-6 words and search was able to find all of the words. But someone searching for "telework" notified us it did not work and we confirmed they were correct.  I guess we just did not pick the right words to search. I have a attached a screen shot of me changing the title of the First Topic as a test to see if I could use it as my cover page.  I hope this helps.

[Ken in DC]

I am thinking that perhaps the First Topic files were designed to be used and not deleted, at least some of them. I attached a screen shot of the First Topic content that is generated automatically when you created your project.  It says, "Delete this text and replace it with your own." This is exactly what I did when I started using it as our Title Page. I hope this helps.  Thank you again!

[Peter Grainge]

@Ken in DC 

I created a new merge in Update 8 and it is working correctly.

As I created the parent and two children, I deleted First Topic as the first thing I did in each project.

In the child projects I created two new topics in each.

Then I referenced the child projects in the parent TOC. The parent has no topics of its own.

With that done I generated each project.

• In the parent I set the default topic to be the child one project, that opens that child's default topic.
• In the child projects I noticed they still referenced First Topic so I changed that to one of the topics I had created.

As above, it is working with no problems related to First Topic.

Did you check the default topics in the presets of the child projects?

________________________________________________________

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

[Ken in DC]

Hi Peter,

Thank you for contiuning to look into this. But as of now, our search problems have been resolved. The steps you took to create your project are all in-line with what I did except we are linking Word documents that create the content. We are not creating content within RH or adding topics. The default topics in all my children are set to the first chapter within the section or Word document linked.

Our problem was with the search funtion not working if we deleted the First Topic in the parent at set-up. According to your last post, it sounded like you deleted the First Topic from your parent.  I am curioius if the search function works properly now.  

Regardless, as of now, our problems have been resolved until another presents itself. I hope what I have shared is helpful to others. I greatly appreciate your help in working through this issue.  You have been very helpful.

Thank you!

Ken

[Peter Grainge]

Finally I see the problem but there's a workaround. 🙂

Yes there must be a topic from the parent in the merge for search to work following Update 8. I have taken that up with Adobe.

Meantime

1. In the parent leave First Topic or any topic in.
2. Remove all content from the topic, including the heading. You just want a blank page.
3. Add that topic to the parent TOC.
4. Select the Hide in Output check box in the TOC.
5. In the parent preset choose a child project for the default topic, not the topic that has been created in parent.
6. Generate your help.

The parent topic will not show in the TOC and there is no content for the search to find. The search does work with this workaround.

________________________________________________________

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