Web help: TOC, Index and Search are not showing in Chrome or Edge

[Den DiMarco]

One of our help projects, built with RoboHelp 2015, uses the output of web help. When using Internet Explorer 11, the help pages, table of contents, index and search are all displayed properly. But with Chrome or Edge, the pane for TOC, index and search contains no infomation. (See attachment.)

We upgraded to Robohelp 2019, but find the new RoboHelp is different enough, that for occasional users like us, it's not clear what I need to do to fix this problem. I have not been successful in finding solutions though web searches at Adobe or in general.

Can someone offer step-by-step guidance on how to display the contents for the TOC, Index and Search tabs? 

Thanks!

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

First, is your RH2019 all patched up? Next, did you upgrade directly from RH2015 to RH2019 New UI or through RH2019 Classic?

[Den DiMarco]

Jeff, I just applied the current update, so I have version 2019.0.14. I'm still learning how to use RoboHelp 2019.

Not sure how to best answer your second question, but I'll tell you this.

- RobolHelp 2015 is still on my computer

- I can start RobolHelp 2019

- I can start RoboHelp 2019 classic.

Thanks.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Ok, good - now how did you get the project into 2019 New UI?
Did you just start RH2019 New UI and open up the RH2015 project and have it upgrade it? (you made a backup copy of the RH2015 project before doing any of this, right?)

[Den DiMarco]

Well, since I did that inbetween other tasks, and this was about a month ago, I don't remember those details clearly. At the time I made an assumption that RoboHelp would not overwrite the original project, so I had not made a backup. But afterwards, I made a backup of a slightly older project - maybe only two pages different. That project name is SWMB RH2013 V2.7.1.2.xpj.

[Peter Grainge]

When you upgrade from Classic to New UI, your Classic project is left untouched. It's there in it's old format and still usable in Classic or you can upgrade again.

It's explained in the RoboHelp Reimagine sample project.

[Den DiMarco]

Peter, 

I understand that when I upgrade RoboHelp no project should be touched. But if I upgrade a project, is the origuinal project left intact and a new one created/copied?

I'm not sure what you mean by "or you can upgrade again." Are you saying I could upgrade the project again (non-destructively)? If so, what would be the advantage of doing that? And what specific staeps would I perform to upgrade a project non-destructively?

It's been a month, but I did look at most, if not all, of the reimageind tutorial. While I didn't remember every detail :-), I thought I needed more information so I subsequently purchased a tutorial from IconLogic. I haven't finished that because of other higher priority tasks, so I don't consider myself as knowledgable with RoboHelp yet as I want to be.

As to your blue reply vs. the black reply recommendation: The black reply appears to be placing subsequent entries at the bottom of the conversation. Does the blue reply put the replies at the top?

Thank you for your help.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Re: Reply buttons - blue will place your response in the thread in order at the bottom; black will nest your reply out of chronological order with the response it's replying to. It's easier to follow what's the latest response when the conversation unspools sequentially in chronological order.

Back your your issue - are you saying that you upgraded the project a month ago and have added new content to the RH2019 New UI project? If so, you may have to wade though what's gone wrong in the current version of the project. If you haven't, and are just getting around to playing with it after a month, then no problem - you can scrap this version and upgrade again. However, you probably should try going via RH2019 Classic first & then change the project over to New UI.

[Den DiMarco]

Thanks, Jeff. I used the blue reply button for this reply. It puts me at the top, far away from your reply!

Anyway, back to the issue, as you say.

Any new info I may have entered would be insignificant. I can proceed with whatever is the best recommended route. When you say "you can scrap this version and upgrade again.", I believe you're referring to the project, right? Not the RoboHelp Software?

If so, then is there a preferred set of steps to follow to upgrade the project? I ask becasue when I first used RoboHelp 2019 Classic to upgrade (however I did it) my project, the resulting pages looked visually corrupted, with "double-red boxes" visible at the top left and bottom left as indicated by the green arrows below. So I've decided to ask for help to try to get my original "Missing TOC, index and Search" issue resolved.

Thank you for your patience and your help.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Re: Buttons - it looks like it's at the top when composing, but when posted it's down in order at the bottom.

Ok, so you can scrap the upgraded version of the project with no wories - good. You indicate that you did do the last upgrade of the project via RH2019 Classic - but I suspect it was an earlier version of RH2019 Classic, right? One of the patches - 12? - 13? - had issues when dealing with upgrading older Classic projects; that's why I suggested using the latest patch version and try again. Peter might have some advice about checking/fixing the project at the RH2019 Classic phase before proceeding to the New UI. I'm not sure what you ran into before, is - without rooting around in the project. It might or might not be needed to be fixed before proceeding.

[Den DiMarco]

Yes, I see that now about the blue button. Thanks to you and Peter for the education.

You'r eright that my earlier upgrade to the project would have been with a version of RoboHelp earlier than 14.0.14.002 which I now have. Apparenlty when I upgraded RoboHelp 2019, RoboHelp 2019 Classic was also upgraded.

So now I can try upgrading my earlier project, but only after I make a copy of it, right?

[Den DiMarco]

Oh. And I should perform the upgrade to my project using RoboHelp 2019 Classic, not the newer RoboHelp 2019.

So are these the correct steps to follow?

1. Make a copy of my project
2. Start RoboHelp 2019 Classic
3. To upgrade, Select File > Open Project?
4. Then maybe follow some prompts as to upgrading? (Or maybe RH will know to upgrade, do so, and inform me that it is doing so?)

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Yes, then have a look at the upgraded project in RH2019 Classic to see that everything looks good - if it doesn't report back & maybe Peter will have some ideas/advice about proceeding.

[Den DiMarco]

Thank, Jeff.

I'll give that a try now.

[Den DiMarco]

Jeff and Peter,

After opening the earlier project with RoboHelp 2019 Classic, I didn't see anything special being reported. The red squares are still shown. I'm happy to entertain other suggestions and thank you for them.

[Den DiMarco]

Jeff and Peter,

Although I have not tried to create any output, when I selected Batch output to see what was selected, I saw that RH 2019 Classic shows Responsive HTML5. This was definitely not used in the original project. I need RH 2019 Classic to create two different help folders each with a set of web help files (with slightly different content. This is how the original help wa set up.)  But it appears RH 2019 classic does not "know" about the previous output set up.

Do you have any suggestions as to how I might resolve this? Thanks.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

There's no such thing as the old WebHelp in RH2019 - it's just Responsive HTML5 with the responsiveness turned off in the skin.

[Den DiMarco]

Thanks, Jeff.

I'll have to give that some thought as to how to proceed. (On Monday. 🙂 )

Thanks for your reply.

[Peter Grainge]

First the button issue. When you click the black icon the reply does appear in order. However, if someone then clicks the black reply in that post it gets nested. The end result of that is that the latest reply can then be nested halfway through the thread. Think of a printed document with no page numbers and the pages are not in order.

Now to summarise as what Jeff as said is right but I'm not sure you followed.

1. When you upgrade from one classic version to another classic version, the old project is upgraded and you are not left with a copy valid in the old version.
2. Thus if you upgrade from 2015 Classic to 2019 Classic you can't go back. Hence you must always make a backup in case that step goes wrong.
3. When you upgrade from any Classic version to 2019 New UI, the Classic version is left untouched and can still be opened in whichever version of Classic it was in.
4. You can upgrade from any Classic version to the New UI version but if there are problems, it is recommended you go from whatever Classic version you were using to Classic 2019 first.
5. Then upgrade from Classic 2019 to the New UI by opening 2019 New UI and upgrading.

That's what you need to try. However, in this case I'm not sure it is the upgrade that is behind your problem. The skin you are showing is webhelp so it is from Classic. I'm not clear whether you are wanting to work in the New UI where the skin you would use would not have that problem or you want to stay with Classic.

I seem to recall the TOC was a problem and that there are posts about that. If you changed to a responsive skin, the problem would, I think, go away. What is responsive? On a PC full window it is much the same as webhelp but the layout changes as you shrink the window or view on a mobile device. In the New UI version you can turn that off so that it behaves like webhelp.

Hope that helps.

[Den DiMarco]

Peter, thank you for that detailed explanation. I try your suggestions on Monday and let you know of the results.