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I have run into this issue before. I am seeing it again. Some of my RoboHelp projects are losing topics. I am using RH 2019 classic, Version 14.0.11.0. When I searched our online help for a key topic, "Creating Customers," I noticed it was missing. When I looked at the RH project, I saw that it was no longer in the help project. I re-imported it. I saved the project files. I closed the project. I deleted the .cpd file. I re-opened the project. The topic is gone again. It's missing from the TOC (shown in this image)...
...and it is no longer in the RH project folder even though I just reimported it before saving and closing RH.
I think a forum user recommended in a previous post years ago adding a new topic to the TOC because RH then uses a different process to run through and save TOC files. I have tried that in the past. It seems to work for a time, but then I lose topics again. Is anyone else running into this? Any solutions? Thanks!
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Have you tried deleting the CPD and reopening the project? I assume you have checked the file is in Explorer.
There is now Update 14. Maybe that will help, don't know.
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I mentioned above that I deleted the CPD file, re-opened the project, and the file I had just re-imported was gone. Since that time, I re-imported the file again, saved and closed RH, re-opened RH, and the file is there for now. Related: At present I have 4 public versions of web help based on this particular RH project and an older internal version for historical reference that is no longer updated--all created using conditional build tags. The historical reference version still has the topic, and it works as expected. The 3 older public versions, which get updated less frequently than the newest version, contain Index link references to the topic that still work, but it is no longer accessible from the TOC or search in those versions. In the newest version (the one from which I noticed the topic was missing), even the Index is not functioning as expected. If I search for customers, the Index shows listings through "co..." and nothing past that. If I search for a term later in the alphabet, I can scroll up to index listingings through "da..." but nothing before that. Not sure if that's a side effect of the topic's missing from RH or something else. Either way, I will be having IT republish new versions with the restored content.
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Sorry, I missed that. I was trying to help while listening to a webinar. 🙂
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Can you check if the file is in the folder on your hard drive? Right-click on the People_Functional folder in RH and select Explore.
If it is, can you try creating a new, temporary folder in RH? In RH, right-click on the Project Files folder (might be called "HTML Files" depending on your view) and select New > Folder. It doesn't matter what you name it, as it's only temporary.
If the file doesn't show up, delete the temporary folder. I'm afraid I don't have any other suggestions.
If the file does show up, congratulations and delete the temporary folder! As near as I can tell, creating a new folder forces RH to update its database in some way that deleting the cpd file doesn't. (In fact, deleting the cpd reliably causes these ghost files to vanish in the first place.)
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Hi, Amebr. I couldn't remember if it was adding a new topic or adding a new folder. At any rate, that process for having RH find and restore topics that had somehow gotten excluded from the output files no longer works for me. I shut down my PC over the weekend. When I re-opened the project today, the mising topic was still in the folder on my C drive but was no longer in the project again. I added a new folder to the HTML Files (Topics) folder. In the past, RH took a while to "process" the addition of a new folder. It doesn't for me now. The system added the new folder quickly. The lost topic was not restored. I re-imported the topic again. At this point, I'm not sure how many other topics may be lost, too. Still open to suggestions. Thanks.
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I am having the same exact issue using RH 2019 Classic (mainly because RH 2020 broke our project and we are waiting on Adobe to get back to us).
I am creating new topics for a new feature and they are not being saved in my TOC or Project Topic list. They are saved in my IE File Project Folder and our version control.
Can someone walk me through what you mean by deleting the .cpd file? I haven't tried that. Does it re-generate after you remove it? Any and all help deeply appreciated. Thanks
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First, everything I'm about to say applies ONLY to RH2019 Classic and earlier. If you are on RH2019 New UI or RH2020 or newer, this information is irrelevant.
First thing, you mention source control, so that might be causing the problem.
Take a zip file backup of your project, just in case. Then check that the following files are not in your source control: yourprojectname.cpd, yourprojectname.pss, yourprojectname.ldb. These files cause all sorts of problems if they are in source control. If they are, delete them from source control. Make sure those files are not marked as Read Only on your C drive. Then try making your changes again. (Make sure those 3 files aren't added back to source control.)
If that doesn't work, you can try deleting the cpd file. Close Robohelp and use File Explorer to locate the cpd file in your project folder. Delete it and reopen your project. Robohelp will recreate the file.
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Are you both on the same version of RoboHelp? I doubt that's the issue but let's get that out of the way.
The LDB file is only present on the local machine when a project is open. The CPD file is really a Microsoft Access database and they create LDB files to lock it while you work.
Have you tried full check in and taking fresh copies of the project? I'm not a source control user but that does seem to be where the issue is.
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See www.grainge.org for free Authoring and RoboHelp Information
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No, I imagine you use SVN to check out the Project's source files from the SVN repo to your local machine, then you have RH work on the files; then you save & re-check in the RH Project files from your local to the repo. Isn't this how you work? Or are the Project files just sitting on some shared network drive & you take turns editing them?
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My feeling is that as the project works fine until someone else works on it, the issue is the SVN.
There are three more updates to RoboHelp.
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See www.grainge.org for free Authoring and RoboHelp Information
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/edit: deleted a the suggestion was already covered earlier.
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Suggested in the first reply to this thread. I should have said on both machines.
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See www.grainge.org for free Authoring and RoboHelp Information