I was talking over the problem with my co-worker and she found this item through a google search:

• When you have defined more than one conditional build tag, it is usually better to use inclusive conditional build expressions—in other words, expressions that specify the tags you want to include instead of those you want to exclude. For example, if you have three conditional build tags “Client_A”, “Client_B”, and “Client_C”, and you want to include only Client A content, you should use the conditional build expression “Client_A”. Ironically, to create this simplest of conditional build expressions, you need to click on the Advanced button in the Define Conditional Build Tag Expression dialog. You can then select the appropriate conditional build tag and use the Add Tag button to create the conditional build expression.
  

So in other words, enter the conditional you want to use in your build expression and don't enter any of the others. I was surprised but this did work for me. So in my case, the string with the conditions A, B, C, D, and E applied to it. I entered "C" in my build expression and nothing else. The string displayed when I generated the C SSL output.

Sometimes even doing this I still wasn't getting the output I wanted. I noticed I had to switch back and forth between the Design editor and the HTML editor to apply/remove conditional build tags. When I applied a build tag in the Design Editor, I would switch to the HTML editor and notice the tag still wasn't applied. Then after manually typing it in the html editor, the output was correct.

So, Peter, I think I've resolved this issue. Can you tell me how to speed up RoboHelp so it's not hanging so much with my various SSL outputs? I did delete the CPD file as you suggested and it didn't  help. I guess I need to re-read those threads you mention on your site.

Hi Peter,

I was referring to this snippet on your page about why RH gets slow and unresponsive and the possiblity of it being related to the number of SSL layouts:

"This problem crops up from time to time and in most cases it is because the CPD file has become bloated. The solution is usually to delete the CPD and reopen the project. That is covered in Opening Projects on this site.

There were two threads though where this did not fix the problem in RoboHelp 8. See http://forums.adobe.com/thread/776782 and http://forums.adobe.com/thread/698592. There you will see that the initial cause was pinned on the number of layouts but I had seen projects with many more that worked just fine.

Eventually MeWrite identified that it was not the number of layouts but the number of URLs they contained. Lee Passey then identified a workaround. He identified that  the list of publication servers is stored in an XML file named "pblsvrs.sss" and by swapping different versions of that in and out of the project, performance became acceptable."

I have 151 topics in the project. 65 images. My project is stored locally. I'm running RH version 8.0.2.208. Yes, my project is running locally on my PC.

Slowness is horrible. I'll right-click on an SSL, waiting for the pop-up dialog to show. It can take more than a minute for the pop-up dialog to show up, if it does at all. When I click one of the commands on the pop-up (typically Generate or Properties), it can take another minute before the webhelp output dialog displays. Slowness is exacerbated every time I click in the Single Source Layouts pod.

I leave Task Manager on to monitor how much CPU-resources RH takes when I click on these layouts. CPU usage is always maxed out and the RH screen sometimes goes completely white and tries to refresh and repaint. This is all happening as I type.

I have 19 websites defined for publishing, but for any SSL, I only ever have two selected for publishing. Will I see an improvement if I delete them? I hand off my webhelp projects to another writer through a Dropbox account, so I don't need them defined anymore.

I'll look at the sample project and try the two projects approach.

Peter--Didn't see the Salesbuilder project. Is that from a newer build of RH?

I also divided up the project as you suggested. Didn't see a performance difference between the two. When I would right-click on a SSL, RH wouldn't respond and bog down. The screen would go blank just as before with both versions.

Rick--You're just asking for the name of my project? This is the name of it, copying it from the Rename project dialog: LifeLineHelp_RH

Are you thinking it's a path problem for the project folder?

So it sounds like if I use a shorter path, I should see faster results with RH? I'll give it a try.