Inspiring

Answered

Unable to delete empty folders in the My RoboHelp Projects folder.

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
March 22, 2016
4 replies
2698 views

RoboHelp 2015 (12.0.2.384)

Unable to delete empty folders. I get a "Could not find this item" error message. Tried deleting in Project Manager, Explorer, and DOS.

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Correct answer TXTechWriter

My reading is that this folder cannot be seen in RoboHelp Project Manager but can be seen when the File Open dialog is pointed to the My RoboHelp Projects folder, also if you use File Explorer to browse to that location. In other words, RoboHelp is not seeing it, only a dialog fed with information from Windows.

Try this as I have used it to delete a sticky file that nothing else would clear. Install FileZilla, there is a portable version if you don't want to install into Program Files. Use that to browse to the folder and and try to delete it from within FileZilla.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

Finally was able to delete that folder. I had to go into DOS and find the hidden folder and delete it. DOS makes my head hurt. I didn't use FileZilla because our company does not allow us to install anything not approved. I believe RoboHelp must be doing something under the covers and had a reference to that folder that I could not find.

Captiv8r

Legend

Sooo, I'll be interested to see if the DOS removal actually "sticks". Because if it's something in your RoboHelp project that caused the folder to be created, it will likely be RE-created at some future point.

Cheers... Rick

TXTechWriterAuthor

Inspiring

LOL, you are just a little ray of sunshine! No, the phantom folder never returned. And it has been over 2 months. In fact, I waited to post this answer for that very reason.

KimberlyO

Inspiring

I feel like I'm interrupting, but I'm throwing this out there. I Googled this and came across this post: Cannot delete o byte file that "doesn't exist" Solved - Windows 7 Help Forums #7 talks about using PowerTool to force delete the folder/file.

Captiv8r

Legend

I think you need to give the link KimberlyO found a try.

TXTechWriterAuthor

Inspiring

Here is what it looks like when attempting to open within RoboHelp:

When I select this file and attempt to delete it, I get the following error message:

Any thoughts?

Captiv8r

Legend

Okay, I'm a bit confused here. From what I've seen in the thread to this point, it seems you are seeing a folder inside a project that is empty and you wish to delete it. But one of the images shows the "Open Project" dialog.

Did you just use that process to grab the screen image? Or are you honestly thinking a project exists in the folder and you are trying to open it from inside RoboHelp? Are you seeing the folder in Windows Explorer?

One thing you might try would be to clobber the CPD file. Fortunately I have a video that shows you how to easily do this.

Click here to access that video

Cheers... Rick

Captiv8r

Legend

Sorry for the confusion. Here are the facts:

This folder is NOT within a project.
It used to contain a project.
All files were deleted out of that folder.
It really isn't in Project Manager.
It just shows up in the Open Project dialog box.
It cannot be deleted in the Open Project dialog box, Windows Explorer, or DOS.
It cannot be renamed.
I suspect that there is some kind of link to this file within RoboHelp since it shows up in the Open Project dialog box.

And for your information, I have been working with RoboHelp since it was owned by Blue Sky Software so I am very familiar with it. I have contributed to this forum many times as well. I was hoping for one of the Adobe Developers to give me some explanation and or guidance.

LOL, my apologies if I somehow offended you and led you to believe I thought you were a n00b. Just trying to help sort what may be happening.

I never claim to know all there is to know with anything. But to the best of my knowledge, RoboHelp really doesn't care about folders in that Open Project dialog other than to simply present the folders it finds. Since this is a folder on the operating system, the RoboHelp dialog is presenting it to you as a candidate that possibly contains a project. There should be nothing "RoboHelp related" that would indicate any sort of hook or otherwise that says "RoboHelp has a hold on this folder". So as far as anything RoboHelp related, I think you need to abandon the notion that RoboHelp has anything to do with the folder.

My own hunch is that you will ultimately find that this folder in the Windows operating system has some funky attribute assigned to it and that's what is preventing you from accessing or deleting it.

Cheers... Rick

KimberlyO

Inspiring

Couple of things I've run into:

Did you delete the folders elsewhere? Like through File Manager (Windows Explorer)? If you did, you'll need to recreate the folders there and then try deleting them.

In Project Manager check under Images. If there were images in any of the topics that are gone, the images reside here. You'll need to remove the images from the folders that correspond with your empty folders. These folders are created automatically for the images. I was ready to pull my hair out at one time..

TXTechWriterAuthor

Inspiring

Sorry, no luck. I recreated the folders, then deleted them. I still get a "Could not find this item" error message. Since this is an empty folder, it has no images.

KimberlyO

Inspiring

Okay, so when you recreate the folders, don't delete them outside of RoboHelp. Recreate the folders and then go back into RoboHelp and delete them. RoboHelp can't delete what "isn't" there. (Even though you can technically see the folders in RH, they aren't where they are supposed to be so RH can't delete them.)

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