Table of Contents behaving oddly

[Jo_Pearson]

Hi,

I wonder if some kind soul may be able to help me.

I've generated content from RoboHelp 2022.3. I have a table of contents that has sections. For some of the sections, when I click an item in the TOC in the generated content it shows that page, however, it also expands another completely unrelated section in the table of contents.

It happens with every page within a section, but not every section does this.

I've checked the table of contents in RoboHelp multiple times and can find nothing that would cause this.

I've been told that it may be a bug in RoboHelp, but I wondered whether anyone else had experienced this issue and if so whether they had found a way to stop it from happening.

Thanks!

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Can you post some screenshots showing what's happening? 

[Jo_Pearson]

Thanks for replying.

In the graphic below, if I click one of the items in the expanded Securing Documents group, the pdfDocs group at the bottom automatically expands (see second screenshot).

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Does the sample project misbehave? Does it misbehave if you try with a different preset?

[Jo_Pearson]

This is happening in both RoboHelp 2020 and RoboHelp 2022 with multiple presets. I will try the sample project. 

Thanks.

[Peter Grainge]

Some books with links and some books without links to a topic?

________________________________________________________

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

[Jo_Pearson]

Thanks for replying,

I've checked the HTML for the TOC very carefully and all pages within each section of the TOC have working links. When I click each item in the TOC it shows the correct page, it's just that it also auto expands another section in some instances. 

[Amebr]

Does this happen with the generated content on your local computer or only after you publish to a webserver? If it's only on a webserver, then it could be a caching issue. In this case you can ask the server administrator to set a shorter max-age http header on the whxdata folder

[Jo_Pearson]

Thanks very much for your reply. Yes, it's only on the webserver that it's happening. I will approach IT and ask very nicely for them to make the change you suggest.

Update:

I've just generated another project and I'm having the problem locally as well as on the server. It's happening on multiple browsers (Edge, Chrome, Firefox). I'm clearing my cache and refreshing, but I'm still seeing the problem locally as well as on the server. Any thoughts?

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Try generating into another new folder location on your local machine to see if it refreshes.

[Jo_Pearson]

Thanks for the suggestion. I've just tried this but unfortunately I still have the same issue with the TOC.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Sorry got my threads crossed - I thought you were having a caching issue (which is someone else's thread). Did you try the sample project to see if the TOC issue is happening there?

[Jo_Pearson]

I've tried the sample project and the TOC works there. In doing that, I realise I didn't mention in my original post that my TOC is made up of sections each containing a child project.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Whoa! Merged help - have you followed this guidance - https://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/rh_tour/rh2022/authoring/merged_help.htm ?

[Jo_Pearson]

Thanks, I will review the link. We've been using merged projects in RoboHelp for more than 10 years and have not had a problem before. It's a very recent issue.

[Peter Grainge]

Try auto-generating a new TOC and testing that.

Which template are you using?

________________________________________________________

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

[Jo_Pearson]

Thanks, it's the Azure Blue template.

I will try autogenerating the TOC in the child projects and will report back. As mentioned above, the master TOC consists of multiple sections each containing a child project, which I unfortunately neglected to mention in my original post. We've been using merged projects for a very long time as we have a huge amount of content of which we serve up different elements to different groups of people and have never had a problem until now. We're not aware that we are doing anything any differently to previously.

[Jo_Pearson]

I've just tried auto-generating the TOC in one of the child projects and the TOC behaves normally if I leave the list as just pages, generate and place inside the parent. I then tried to group into sections (these are necessary due to the sheer quantity of content) and I'm back to having the same problem. Interestingly, it doesn't happen on all sections just some and I can't see any difference between them. The HTML code for the sections is identical. In the screenshot below, the pages in the first section behave normally in the generated output, while clicking each of the pages in the second section auto expands the TOC for a completely different child project as well as displaying the correct htm page.

[Peter Grainge]

Have tried regenerating all the projects starting with the parent? 

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

[Jo_Pearson]

Sorry I didn't see this before I posted my reply above. Yes, I've started again from scratch generating the parent, then the child projects.

[Peter Grainge]

I have to admit I am getting a bit lost here.

• You have a merged setup.
• The parent TOC simply has the references to the child projects. The parent has no topics of its own.
• In the parent preset the default topic is a link to a topic in one of the child projects.

Is that much correct?

If you generate each child to a folder outside the merge, the TOC functions correctly. To be clear, generate to a new folder with sub-folders for each child but do not generate the parent. You need to test each child as if it were a standalone. Just change the path in the preset.

Do the children then behave?

Let us know and we can take it from there.

________________________________________________________

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

[Jo_Pearson]

Yes, it's a merged setup.

The parent has one topic - a welcome page, which is the default topic. The rest of the TOC in the parent consists of multiple sections each containing a child project.

I will do some more testing to answer your other questions and will report back when I've had chance to do that.

[Jo_Pearson]

Each child works in isolation, but that's because the issue was that when clicking a page in certain (but not all) sections of the child, it was the TOC of a different child that was auto expanding. It's a very strange issue!

Anyway, after regenerating everything (parent and children) multiple times, it is now working locally. Then, after clearing the cache and refreshing multiple times, it is now working when accessed from the webserver.

Thanks everyone for your assistance - much appreciated.