headings are duplicated in Printed Document

[rhino19]

I noticed that some headings in my Printed Document were duplicated. I investigated and found that topics used as Books in the TOC had that problem: The first heading was duplicated in the Printed Document. I also happened to use the first heading as the topic heading. What is the solution to the problem?

I know I can delete such headings in the Word document after the Printed document is generated.

[Peter Grainge]

The logic is the book name is a bit like a chapter name and then you have the title of the topic. If they are set to be the same, you will get what you are seeing.

In the print layout, you can change the book name so that there is a difference, maybe XXX Chapter rather than just XXX.

Changing the name can be tricky. See Printed Documentation on my site.

[jaggedpeak]

This will definitely happen if your TOC Book Properties for a given book has the "Book with Link" checkbox selected (so that the first topic under the book appears when you click the book).

When you get to the Print Document Content window where you 'organize your topics in the chapter layout' and click the Add (right arrow) button for such a book, you will see the book appear in the Chapter Layout pane with *two* copies of the topic below it. Simply highlight one of the copies of the topic and click the Delete (left arrow) button to remove it.

[ChickAD]

Hi,

we had the same problem so the answers from Peter and jaggedpeak were very interesting.

We got round it by creating a tag "NotInPrinted" and attached it to the Headers of Topics that were linked to books. Then excluded them from the build.

I hadn't noticed the duplication of the topic in the Print Document Content window however so I'll be looking into that.

[Peter Grainge]

ChickAD

However you exclude a topic from a build, if excluded you don't get the topic once, never mind twice. I am not seeing how this gets the topic in once only.

[Chet Zeshonski]

Peter, I believe ChickAD is talking about applying the tag at the content level, not the topic level.

[Peter Grainge]

So that excludes the header being duplicated but the problem was the whole topic being duplicated so surely that would still occur? Just that the second time the heading or some content would not be included.

I know I am missing something here but if a topic, or any part of it, is in twice, then any tagging will exclude both instances, no?

[Paula R. Stern]

The simplest way to avoid this is to use conditional tags. In the online version of your documentation - you'll have a heading in the TOC and the heading in the HTML file - and all is good. In the printed documentation, you will indeed have two headings - one for the book and one for the topic. So, what I do to avoid this is highlight the heading in the html file and apply a conditional tag - "online" - then I create a build statement for the printed documentation output that says "not online" and I end up with only one heading.

HTH

Paula

[Paula R. Stern]

Reading the other replies - I have one further comment.  You can change the heading - but that is extra work and might confuse the end-user. More, it confounds QA...best, I believe is to highlight the heading and remove the duplication by tagging it as I previous wrote.

However - this is only in relation to the issue of there being duplicate headings because of the TOC entires.

If you are talking about duplicate topics - this also would be a result of the topic "appearing" in two places in the TOC. In this case, you can accomplish the same thing by tagging the TOC entry and appying a conditional tag, or building a separate printed documentation TOC and an output SSL for that.