Style and Font of entire project changed

[JJRWorkAccount]

The font and formating of my entire project has updated without explination and is "wonky" to say the least. All of my topics and pages have differen styles, sizes, colors and its a mess. I do not even know where to start! What I current have published is fine, but if I go to edit all pages are all over the place and when I preview it looks that way too. 

[JJRWorkAccount]

I am on RoboHelp 2019 

[Peter Grainge]

Classic or New UI?

Output type?

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

[JJRWorkAccount]

Classic 

Respoinsive HTML5

[JJRWorkAccount]

Responsive*

[Peter Grainge]

Try deleting the CPD file and then reopening the project. 

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

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

After recreating the CPD, per Peter's suggestion, check to make sure the proper CSS are applied, and check the code view for hints on what is breaking the formatting. If that all looks correct, open the CSS itself and look for oddities.

I find the Inspect feature in Chrome or other browsers can help you figure out what exactly is formatting your content, but it can be daunting to work around in the Inspect interface if you're not used to reading CSS and HTML.

-Matt

[JJRWorkAccount]

Thank you both, I am very much out of my depth here as I am from the technical writing side of the house and not the application and just sort of henherited my RoboHelp role. I have been engaging technical partners within my company who so to say "speak the language" but they are not familiar with RoboHelp at all. I am going to ask something that is probably very basic so forgive me, but after much searching I cannot locate "how to delete the CPD file" is there a link or a tutorial from another discussion that you all may have? I am absoutley sick over this as it is hunderds of pages of content that the formating is all over the place on not just a single or a few pages of content or topics, the entire project. 

[Peter Grainge]

Another company that thought using RoboHelp is just like using Word so anyone can take it on? 🙂

With the project closed you can go to the root folder of the project in Explorer and delete it OR you can apply this setting, then close and reopen the project.

The first way deletes it once only, the second deletes it every time you open the project. Personally I use the second option to stop the file getting bloated.

Post back if that doesn't fix it.

________________________________________________________

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

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

But to be fair, Peter, Blue Sky went out of their way to make RoboHelp look and act like Word for the first few decades.

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

I think Peter forgot to show you where (in File > Options) you can set the option to Clear project cache (.cpd file) before opening any project.

For the record, if you're starting up with RoboHelp, you may find it easier to use the latest release, RoboHelp 2022. The interface is different, but more intuitive than the Rh 2019 Classic interface, that resembles RoboHelp from the 90's.

[Peter Grainge]

That would be around when Adam was a lad. 🙂

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

[Peter Grainge]

As a further aside, before Blue Sky purchased RoboHelp, it was a Word add-on.

________________________________________________________

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

[Peter Grainge]

Oops. I did a screenshot but forgot to add it. 

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

[Peter Grainge]

@JJRWorkAccount Is this issue now resolved or do you need further help?

________________________________________________________

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

[JJRWorkAccount]

Good day,  No my issue still persists. I do not seem to have the "options" from the File menu. I have attached a screenshot of what I see. 

I am working with technology partners to try to resolve and it has been asked if there is a way to rewrite all of the style rules for the whole site. I am on RoboHelp Classic 2019 2019.0.14 and have verified to ensure there are no updates available for me. 

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

Ah, based on your screenshot, you are using the RoboHelp 2019 with the Modern UI, not the one with the Classic UI, as indicated. Classic mode is the version that uses a CPD file to store preferences)

Rh 2019 was the first version with the Modern UI, so it had something like 18 updates. You seem to have the 14th update, which is 5 updates beyond when I last updated Rh 2019.

I strongly suggest upgrading to RoboHelp 2022. The feature set is more complete and the application is more stable.

Regardless of which version you use, it does sound like your project is corrupt. I recently encountered the same thing (with a more up-to-date version of RoboHelp) after I'd mucked around with the names of output presets and topic template files in an existing project.

After trying to rescue the project file, I abandoned it, created a new project, and imported my assets (topics, templates, css, and other resources into a fresh project.

Having not renamed my resources in my new project, I've been successful in that project since then.

[Peter Grainge · Accepted solution]

Hold up. The latest screen shot of the File menu is from the new UI version of RoboHelp, not the Classic version.

I am wondering if you have upgraded to 2019 New UI which looks something like this...

or are using Classic which looks like this.

Let's get that resolved first. You can upgrade a Classic project as the menu shot shows but you can only work in one version or the other.

I'm guessing your CSS went wrong in an upgrade and hence wherever else you are seeking help has asked about rewriting the style rules. I think what they mean is can you write a new CSS? Sure you can but you said they are not RoboHelp specialists and they will not realise what a lot of work that is.

Let us know which version you are using and whether this went wrong in an upgrade.

BTW. Please use the photo icon to insert images within a post. Seeing an image inline with the text makes it easier for anyone answering or viewing the post.

________________________________________________________

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

[JJRWorkAccount]

pologies, it is the 2019 New UI not the classic as I had thought. Looking at the provided screenshots I have never used Classic. I do not believe the error resulted as part of an upgrade, I mad some minor updates to a topic on 12/29 without any incident. On Friday AM 12/30 I went into the project to update content in another topic and received an error message and the topic page formatting became odd. I closed out of the topic without saving and upon reopening discovered all of the topic pages to have the same formatting and styling errors not just the topic page I was previously working on.

[JJRWorkAccount]

I was just checking the style sheet and noted there was some odd formating in the "span" field, when I changed the font to none it does seem to have corrected 99% of the topics contents. Could the fix be that easy? 

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools · Accepted solution]

Yes! HTML formatting overrides CSS formatting, so checking the code view is always a good first step.

[Kevin Siegel · Accepted solution]

I'd want to see your Source code so we can rule out manual code overrides and determine if multiple style sheets have been assigned to the topic.

To view the Source, open a topic and click the Source icon in the upper right of the RoboHelp window. Take some screen shots of the Source code window.

[Amebr · Accepted solution]

Another thing to check in that span style you have selected in your screenshot. Under Layout > Display, make sure (default) is selected.  The tl;dr is that any other option can have very strange results (and would cascade to the glosstext and expandtext spans as well.)