TOC Books Closed (All)

[Guest]

I'm using RoboHelp 6, and I can't seem to figure out this quirky problem:

After building the Help, everything functions properly... TOC, Browse Order, main topic page is displayed... everything.

When manually looking at the Help system on the server, everything works properly.

Then, when accessing the Help through a link from a simple web page, the entire TOC is closed (though everything else works fine) — even the current book isn't open, though it does open if selected.

I haven't had this problem with any of the other four help systems that I've built, and this one is driving me crazy! Any ideas out there?

[RoboWizard]

Hi Injun Joe

Sometimes we find that the automatic synchronization will fail under certain conditions.

Here's the deal. When you generate WebHelp and progress through the dialogs, you find an option for Synchronizing the TOC Automatically. So the first step is to ensure that is selected. Assuming it is, another screen or two into the dialogs is an option that allows you to configure Speed Optimization. Try changing from Web Site (Internet) to Local PC or Intranet (Internal Network). Sometimes this little change will cause synchronization issues to resolve.

Here's why. With the Web Site optimizing, the TOC is broken into smaller chunks of information. I believe the first level of the TOC is loaded first. Then other passes load the secondary and tertiary levels and beyond. There is JavaScript code inserted in the topic itself that causes the synchronizing to occur. So if the topic loads up and fires the script to sync to the TOC, but the TOC segment isn't there, well, you should be able to see where this could be an issue. By changing the speed optimization, you force RoboHelp to keep the TOC in a single file. The trade off here is that it takes slightly longer for the TOC to load up. But it often corrects synchronization issues as you are reporting.

Hopefully this helps a bit... Rick

[Guest]

Thank you... that fixed the problem 🙂