Search results limit

[AsisCSI]

I have a very large chm file with over 1000 topics - when searching common terms the Search window only displays the first 500 applicable topics,

Is there some sort of search display limit?
Is there a way around this?

Thanks

[Guest]

do you really expect your users to accept search results of hundreds of topics? What I mean is, when I do a search and receive a huge amount of hits, I don't start surfing through them. I try a different keyword or keyword combination until I get the results down to a reasonable amount.

The software I document is for accounting. Any user of ours who expects to get a usable search results list with the keyword PAYROLL, for example, is quickly going to learn they need to be more specific.

I know this doesn't answer your question, but maybe you need to look at the problem from a different direction. Frankly, I don't think your users will want or need what you are looking for.

[Captiv8r]

Index

[Pete_Lees]

hi, AsisCSI,

Yes, the limit is 500 topic titles. See this page:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms669980(VS.85).aspx#20

I don't believe there's any workaround for this.

Pete

[Captiv8r]

Hi all

Okay, so I was being a bit coy earlier.

As Pete correctly indicated, there is no workaround for that limit. The "workaround" you are looking for will be found in building a decent index. Even a RoboHelp index generated using the wizard is likely far better than a search ever would be.

Google hasn't done help authors any favor by introducing folks to the general use of searching for content. It's worth noting that even Google will only present perhaps a total of ten hits per page.

Give your users a halfway decent index and they will likely never need search.

Cheers... Rick