Corrupt RTF Files

[Vyradder]

I've been working on a Winhelp project for 10 years for a software deliverable at my company. The help project is very large. At some point during the timeline, after I upgraded to X5, I would receive the following message when I loaded the project:

"RoboHelp Explorer has detected unregistered routines used by the following features in the project

-html topics or hotspot links to html pages displayed in the help window
-link to an html page displayed in the browser

Do you want Robohelp to make the necessary updates?"

If you said yes, upon compiling the project, several of the RTFs would become corrupted. If you said no, you could proceed normally and everything compiled fine.

Now, I've upgraded to 7.0.2...I get the exact same message...but now, if I say "No", the RTF's become corrupted anyways upon compilation.

Here are my questions:

1. Is there any way to find these hotspots or links so that I can remove them...and will that actually help?

2. Is there any way to fix a corrupt RTF without having to recreate the file from scratch?

I did some research on this a few years back to try and address the problem then. There were no solutions I came across that worked. I dearly hope something has changed since then regarding this.

[Peter Grainge]

The old way was to create a backup of your project and then delete the RTF files. When you reopen RH, it will create new RTS from the DOC files and that used to fix many issues.

Beyond that, sorry but my knowledge of RH for Word is way too old.

[Vyradder]

Thank you very much for your Help today, Peter. I have tried that solution previously to no avail. I believe that these links or hotspots would likely have to be removed for this to work as you have described. My problem is that I cannot locate those things within the word documents to begin with. At this point, I am forced to have to resolve this somehow as 7.0.2 will no longer allow me to get around it. I will have to have another look at the content of the affected files I guess. You'd think a link or something like that would be obvious, but they aren't. I may have to check every jump in the document (hundreds...but I thought all were internal to the help project itself).

[sdreed]

I'm working in RH 6 and am similar problems, and RH is also creating a window definition that is causing problems. Here's a workaround that has -- sofar -- worked for me: compile the project outside of RH. To do this:
1. Close the project in RH.
2. In explorer, navigate to the folder with the project's .hpj file.
3. Double-click the .hpj file to open the Microsoft Help Workshop.
4. Click the Save and Compile button.
The compiled help file will be in the folder as the .hpj file.

Hope this works.

[Vyradder]

I think I have managed to fix this, finally. The order in which you execute the fix is critical, and I had been making a mistake with that in the past.

1. I removed all the RTF files from the project altogether.
2. Load Robohelp...it will inform you that you are missing RTF's...and ask you if you want to create them. DO NOT recreate them at this time.
3. Robohelp will then inform you that there are unregistered html hotspots or links...and ask if you want to fix them. Accept the fix at this point.
4. Then, once you have the project open, perform a "Save All" to recreate the RTF files.
5. Compile the project....no RTF corruption encountered.

In the past, I had always either tried to fix the HTML errors without removing the RTFs, or I had recreated the RTF's before fixing the HTML problem. You have to put the cart before the horse in this case, so to speak.

Hope it helps somebody.

[sdreed]

I really wanted this to work, but it didn't solve my problems. Back to the Help Workshop.
Thank you for the info.