Numbers missing from second half of printed document

[NDRHelp]

Here is a mystery for you. I have converted my rather large help project to a very large Word document and then PDF. The interesting behavior I am seeing is that about halfway through the document the numbers and bullets have disappeared. We have put the numbers and bullets in the same throughout the project but in the second half of the document they are missing. They are in place in the first half of the document.

The project has been around since RoboHelp X.5 and is now in RoboHelp 8. The projects are intermixed with what release they were created in. The document is 2334 pages long and I lose numbering and bullets after page 1133.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Nita

[MergeThis]

I believe the scale of the doc might be the issue.

Could you generate several smaller Word files and join them, or wait until all of them have been converted to PDF, and join those?

Try a sample that includes, for example, the first half of the content in your original second half (that is, from 1100 to 1800).

Good luck,

Leon

[Peter Grainge]

Entirely with Leon, that is one massive document. There are limits to a DOC file albeit difficult to measure.

See http://www.grainge.org/pages/snippets/snippets.htm Item 118.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[NDRHelp]

Thank you Leon and Peter for your timely answers. The numbering and bullets do work when I break the document into smaller documents (it took three). The difficulty I am now facing is that if I try to combine those documents after generation, the numbers stop working again. The document has a TOC on the front so I wanted to combine them within Word to get the TOC accurate by updating - curses.

The only solution I've come up with so far, which is kind of awkward is:

• Have RoboHelp generate the entire document in order to get the TOC
• Generate the next two documents wiht just the smaller sections.
• Delete the extra two sections from the first document.
• PDF all three and combine.

This will break links that are between sections of the document and runs the risk of not the TOC not being accurate.

Can you think of a better way?

Thanks,

Nita

[MergeThis]

You say: "This will break links that are between sections of the document..."

Is this a RH merged project? Or are sections placed into folders in the project? Tell us a bit about your source architecture.

Leon

[NDRHelp]

No, it is not a merged project - just one large project. Topics are placed in folders based upon subject. When I selected to print parts, I separted them by TOC books - only including a few TOC books in each printed section.

[MergeThis]

Hmmm...

So, the Word/pdf file will have all its links pointing to within itself, correct, whereas the online links point through the folders?

So, would this work?

1. Create conditional links for Printed Doc only; these links would have no folders in their paths.
2. Generate your multiple doc files, each with the same file name but in different staging folders.
3. Open the first doc file and insert the second one at the end. Repeat for the third/fourth/etc.
4. Convert to PDF.

You might have to reverse 3 and 4 (convert to PDF, then combine those).

If you're going to test this, you might try with just a few topics instead of the entire behemoth, then work you way up in scale. If it works, you're in for a ton of work. However, you could seek out a developer in your organization (your new best friend), who could provide a script to automate it for you.

Good luck,

Leon

[NDRHelp]

Leon,

Unless I'm missing how to create these links, the links no longer appear if I create them without folders. I copied the original link and pasted it in and removed the folder references. For this experiment I didn't mark it as conditional. When I generated the word doc of the file with the new link, it no longer appears to be a link. I then combined the two documents in Word and created a PDF to see if it would magically connect but still no link.

Let me know if I'm missing something.

Thanks,

Nita

[MergeThis]

Earlier, you said: "Topics are placed in folders based upon subject."

I suggest providing standalone PDFs based on subject and forget about cross-linking. Just set up conditionalized links for "in-subject" links in each of the special Printed Doc layouts.

With a project this size, priorities must be set, and trying to force-fit impossible resolutions will only cause grief upon grief. Be good to yourself!

Good luck,

Leon

[Jared Hess]

Just ran into a similar issue with a large doc file ~2500 pages of approx 36 chapters. After much angst and testing, turns out just one chapter was the culprit. It looked fine on its own, but when combined with the big doc, it lost all its formatting.

Why? I don't know, but anytime I inserted that chapter, it and anything following it had their bullets and numbers removed from lists. And I wasn't able to manually add them back in either.

My painful workaround was to export each chapters as an individual doc, then use the 1 chapter that was causing the problems as the base doc that I'd combine everyting into. I'd then have to add everything into this doc, usually BEFORE the heading and then once I verfied all the lists were fine, reorganize as needed. Painful.

The standalone PDFs idea, one for each chapter, is starting to appeal to me, especially since I'll likely have to do this workaround on the printable manuals for the non-English languages one the help project comes back from localization. Ugg.