Search NOT working in AIR

Report · Sep 30, 2009

I just viewed Jaquez's video on how to create the AIR help the other day. The current project is reasonable sized, 150 topics. The Webhelp works quite well as a demo we just did yesterday got goor responses from a main marketing person and a VP. When I used the procedure I learned in the video to create the air help (dummy digital cert) RH generated the AIR help, but the search does not work? I just saw a sample of an AIR help that Peter G. put together and that search seemed to work. Any idea, folks?

Report · Oct 09, 2009

Praful Jain found an illegal 4 byte character in a .pdf file inside the project that caused the problem. The .pdf is a manufacturer's manual for a handheld scanning device. Thanks Praful. Problem solved!

Report · Oct 28, 2009

Hi there,

I'm facing the same issue you had. In fact, as soon as I import PDF file into my AIRHelp project I got the search function not working...

Is there a way to fix that without avoiding PDF into the project?

I need some PDF to be inserted into the project directly.

Many thanks in advance for any answer!

Regards,

Mateo

Report · Oct 28, 2009

Hi Matt,

Hmmm. Praful found the illegal character, a square bullet that was apparently a typo.

Praful said that the character was 4 bytes which is what made it illegal.

I am not sure what characters are in this "non-supported" category. Perhaps Adobe can supply a list?

For the .pdf to be searchable it must be in the project and not a link, obviously.

Also, I did retest the .AIR module after I did some project cleanup, removing some bad topics and folders. In the first AIR gen, I got an error. As a gray haired geek type, I just gened again and the search worked the 2nd time. So persistence pays off, at least sometimes

Ed

Report · Oct 28, 2009

Hi Ed,

Thank you for answering Indeed I suppose my problem is similar to the one you faced. But actually I don't want the PDF to be searchable; it's only a link within a topic that points out to this PDF. But as soon as I import a PDF in the AIR the search stops to work for any other index, keyword or topics...

Then I remove the PDF and it works fine again... it's quite strange obviously. I've opened a case at Adobe's support... Let's see if they can help me out!

Thank you again

Mateo

Report · Nov 03, 2009

Matt,

I have noticed that when one updates some index related items or does project cleanup, the AIR search sometimes stops working. I closed the project last eve, made my backups and after only 2 cosmetic text edits re-gened both .AIR and Web versions. Like magic, the search works again. From a post by Rick on another thread, it seems clear that Adobe has some more tightening to do on the .AIR help side.

The 8.01 patch fix list does not seem to address these issues.

Buena Suerte!

Ed

Report · Feb 03, 2010

Update Reliable Workaround Found!

I just sucessfully combined topics from 4 modules into 1 RH project and made the AIR file output.

Before I was able to do this task I had to figure out a workaround when the AIR search breaks (Trust me it tends to break from time to time when one is adding to or working on a project)

We have several people doing RH here at this time and Rita is maintaining the KBase that I was loading with the other topics. Her search had broke the day before and I told her to stand down until I sorted it out.

I retrieved the last backups from the shared drive (RH Souce control is still a month off) and looked inside the project.

I noticed that the backup .cpd file was almost 800K smaller than the one Rita had in her PC. So, I remembered a fix from the forums (Peter and Rick, Thanks guys) and deleted the .cpd file which RH rebuilds when you reload the project.

Presto, the new .cpd file was less than 1/3 the prior size and the search worked perfectly!

I built the combined project testing the search (view and install) locally after I imported each folder of topics. At one point when the .cpd file was almost 3meg, the search broke again. I deleted it and the new one was less than 1/2 the size of the old one. Search worked after the 2nd deletion as before. Hooray!

Conclusion: If the AIR search breaks:

Look at the .cpd file
If over 2meg
1. Close the project
2. Delete the file
3. Open the project
Problem solved (see attachment)