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RoboHelp Losing Topics

Participant ,
Jun 26, 2020 Jun 26, 2020

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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)...

Missing Topic.png 

...and it is no longer in the RH project folder even though I just reimported it before saving and closing RH.

Missing Topic2.png

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!

TOPICS
Classic

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Community Expert ,
Jun 26, 2020 Jun 26, 2020

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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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Participant ,
Jun 26, 2020 Jun 26, 2020

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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At present I have 4 public versions of web help based on this particular RH project and an older internal version for historical reference that is no longer updated--all created using conditional build tags.  The historical reference version still has the topic, and it works as expected.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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Community Expert ,
Jun 26, 2020 Jun 26, 2020

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Sorry, I missed that. I was trying to help while listening to a webinar. 🙂

 

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Community Expert ,
Jun 26, 2020 Jun 26, 2020

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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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Participant ,
Jun 29, 2020 Jun 29, 2020

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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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New Here ,
Jan 28, 2021 Jan 28, 2021

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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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Community Expert ,
Jan 28, 2021 Jan 28, 2021

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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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New Here ,
Jan 29, 2021 Jan 29, 2021

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Thank you for responding. First of all, I tried removing the .cpd file and
when I opened my project in RH, most of my files were gone, and I have over
900. So I put the same .cpd file back to restore what I had before. I can
import the missing topic, save, close, reopen and it is there. The problem
is when another author gets in this same project, the file is missing. When
I get back in, it is missing all over again.
Next I tried adding the Temp folder to see if that would reset the DB. It
did not.
Then, today, after seeing your email, I checked the three files you said
should not be in source control (for us that means using SVN, we do not use
the RH collaboration tool). I am missing the projectname.ldb file at all.
Neither does my co-author. So, we are in the middle of a deadline and we
are losing time trying to keep new topics in our project. What do you
recommend?

Thanks,
Rachel Gould
Book Systems, Inc.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 29, 2021 Jan 29, 2021

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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.

________________________________________________________
See www.grainge.org for free Authoring and RoboHelp Information

 

 

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New Here ,
Jan 29, 2021 Jan 29, 2021

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Thanks for your explanation of the files.
I am not sure what you mean by "full check in and taking fresh copies of
the project" do you mean in RoboHelp?
We multi-author in RoboHelp, but we do not use
RoboHelp's collaboration tool "Version Control."

We use SVN (which is what our developers use) so we can share files and
have them backed up. Our project folders are saving the new topics, and it
seems like RH is saving them, until my co-author opens the project and they
are missing and when it comes back to me sometimes it is still missing, and
all we can do for now is keep importing until it sticks. We can't seem to
sync our RH topics list and TOC.

Backstory: We tried to upgrade from 2018 to 2020 and it was a big mess,
broke everything, so support put us back to 2019. We have multiple projects
and usually don't co-author except for big stories or near the end of a big
deadline. So in 2019 Classic, we are having issues with topics not being
saved in RH.

Thanks again

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Community Expert ,
Jan 29, 2021 Jan 29, 2021

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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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New Here ,
Jan 29, 2021 Jan 29, 2021

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Yes, we update from SVN to retrieve any files that another author has
worked on, we open RH and work, then we commit and so on. All of the
changes and new topics are in SVN as well as on our shared network. We have
pretty much eliminated SVN being the issue, we feel it is something off in
our RH 2019 Classic version.
Thanks

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Community Expert ,
Jan 29, 2021 Jan 29, 2021

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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. 

________________________________________________________
See www.grainge.org for free Authoring and RoboHelp Information

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New Here ,
Jan 29, 2021 Jan 29, 2021

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I will revisit with our SVN person on Monday.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 31, 2021 Jan 31, 2021

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/edit: deleted a the suggestion was already covered earlier.

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New Here ,
Feb 02, 2021 Feb 02, 2021

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Thanks to everyone who replied to my post about my missing topics in my
RoboHELP 2019 Classic version.
It was not our SVN causing the problem. We did a demo showing our
development group our process and they looked at our IE project folders,
the file structures, our SVN commits and updates, and they suggested that
there must be a setting in RH that was different between my copy and my
co-author's copy, and they were right. We started at the File | Options |
General Settings menu. The one setting that we were not in sync on was the
"Clear project cache (.cpd file) before opening any project."
This was something that I remembered to do, as we have had issues with this
in the past. Maybe it is delivered disabled? At any rate my co-author had
it disabled. Once we both had it enabled, there were no more missing files
in our first round of testing.

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Community Expert ,
Feb 02, 2021 Feb 02, 2021

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Suggested in the first reply to this thread. I should have said on both machines. 

________________________________________________________
See www.grainge.org for free Authoring and RoboHelp Information

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