RH 2019 - moving folders in RH breaks links to assets folder

[Karin Albrecht]

Hi all,

when I move around folders in RH 2019 to restructure my project (i.e., moving folders into a sub-folder), in many cases my links to the assets folder (css and images) are broken (they are then either missing one ../ or having it too often). However, moving folders does not always break the links, so it is not a solution to simply also move the assets folder into the sub-folder. I am not moving the folders around in the explorer, but inside RH.

Does anyone else have this problem? Am I doing it somehow wrong? I am confident that restructuring files and folders worked pretty well in RH 2017.

Best regards

Karin

[Peter Grainge]

There may have been some issues very early on but if you are moving stuff in the Contents panel, I haven't had any issues with that and I don't think it has surfaced here.

I'm assuming you have updates applied.

Try moving files into new folders rather than moving the whole folder. See if that helps and let us know.

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@petergrainge

[Karin Albrecht]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your reply. Yepp, updates are all applied. Moving single files around works well in most cases, though not in all. Sometimes it seems that the update of the links is too slow and gets lost somehow. I have my files stored on C: currently.

When I tried to put all my currently included files one level deeper, it did not work reliably but caused a lot of broken links. This happens no matter if I move the complete folder or moving only the files from the folder via multiselect.

Regards

Karin

[Peter Grainge]

Any automatic backup system in force or any source control?

Can you spend some time in one of the sample projects to see if you have the same issues there?

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@petergrainge

[Amebr]

And whereabouts on C:? If it's "My Documents" or "Documents", often in corporate environments it's actually a network drive, even though it looks local (or the sync to the network drive is glitchy).

If so, try using a new folder directly of C: and see if that helps.

[Peter Grainge]

Amber's suggestion is certainly worth a try but the new version of 2019 is very different and should work across networks without problems.

The exception to that could be if the path lengths exceed 256 characters.

Please post back if moving it does make a difference as that would mean something needs looking at.

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@petergrainge

[Karin Albrecht]

Thank you both for your help. I actually was having the projects in "documents", but I moved them to Desktop for testing now. As far as I know, no automatic backup is running; source control for sure is not in place here. I'll ask our IT about this.

So, I did a couple of tests with the sample project "RoboHelp reimagined" (always using a copy, because the folder changes cannot be undone, as I learned). By the way, is there a way to grab a fresh set of the sample projects? I am not sure if I already broke something while going through the different walk throughs.

However, here is what I tested and what were the results:

Information:

Used project: RoboHelp Reimagined

Storage Location: Desktop

1. Test

- created new folder "Master"

- multi-selected all existing folders including "assets", except "Master"

- moving all folders into the new folder "Master"

--> 333 broken links (Notice: you'll have to refresh the Broken Links a couple of times to show all the problems):

- TOC (thats normal, as far as I understand)

- Sequences (unsure, if this is okay in this case, as the relation of the files is still the same)

- Topic links (okay)

- Images (not okay, because the relation is still the same)

- css (not okay, because the relation is still the same)

2. Test

- based on the erroneous project from 1. Test

- moved the folder "assets" out of the folder "Master"

- broken links for css and images are fixed

3. Test

- based on clean project

- created new folder "Master"

- moved all folders except "assets" into the new folder

--> looks good

4. Test

- based on clean project

- opened files from a single folder ("upgrading)

- moved folder "upgrading" with files opened one level down in the hierarchy

- css link broken for the files in the moved folder

- image links broken

5. Test (same as 4. Test, but with closed files)

- based on clean project

- moved single folder with files opened one level down in the hierarchy

--> no broken links at all, not even TOC and sequences

--> looks good

6. Test

- moving the single folder back to its previous place

--> broken css and image links

So, it is the case that the assets folder must not be moved from the top level of the project?

I learned that the files must not be opened while moving folders around.

However, the exact behavior is a bit of a mystery to me. Are there any rules to be considered when re-structuring the project folders? Any advice will be welcome.

For the time being, I will strictly take care to make a copy before every folder move

Kind regards
Karin

[Peter Grainge]

I will take a look but meantime you can grab a clean copy from

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe RoboHelp 2019\RoboHTML\Samples\en_US

Do not try to run them from that location. Windows will get very grumpy.

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@petergrainge

[Peter Grainge]

Sorry that path is for Classic.

Try C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe RoboHelp 2019\resources\data\template\projects

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@petergrainge

[Peter Grainge]

Hmm. I just moved the contents of one folder in RoboHelp Reimagined and as you say, there are then loads of broken links.

I have reported this to Adobe.

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@petergrainge

[Karin Albrecht]

Thank you for the path and the reporting, Peter!