Lost images

[Guest]

We have noticed recently that some of the images in our project have disappeared. I suspect the recent upgrade from 4.1 to 6.0 might be responsible. Brief explanation:

More often than not, when I create a new topic, I get the necessary screen shots, process them via Photoshop, and insert them into the topic from a director where I keep images related to the project.

However, sometimes it's more effecient to import a document. This will be a Word document, sometimes with images associated with it. So, in it goes to RoboHelp, images and all. I'm pretty sure the missing images are in the imported documents.

Any reason for this? I have decided to edit all images on Word documents to be imported via Photoshop, just to be safe.

BTW: Is there any way to reduce compile time? It takes about 5 minutes to compile our projects (we have two, relatively large projects) ... with 4.1, it only took a minute or so...

Thanks!
Lon

[Peter Grainge]

Can you explain "insert them into the topic from a director "? What's a director in this context?

Then you say "pretty sure the missing images are in the imported documents". How could there be any doubt?

What file format are the images saved in from Photoshop?

[Guest]

"What's a director in this context?"

Sorry. That's supposed to be "directory."

The images are saved as ".gif" files.

Lon

[Peter Grainge]

So what are you seeing in the imported topics where the images should be?

[Guest]

I'm seeing an empty rectangle where the image should be, with a little red "x" in the upper left corner.

lr

[Peter Grainge]

Take a look via Windows Explorer to see if those images are in a folder within the RH project. If they are, it will probably be under some folder that you can see in RH. Go to the Images folder in RH and find the folder above the one with the images. Right click and select Create Folder and create one with the name you saw in Windows. You might find that magically corrects things. If not, post back and tomorrow I will create a dummy project to look at this some more, it's late here now.

[Guest]

Hi, Peter!

I did what you suggested -- created a folder with the name I saw in Windows (althought there already was such a folder with images in RH); I put the images into the newly created folder ... et voila! it worked.

It appears that I should process images via Photoshop even if they are in documents that are going to be imported, right? I'm still not clear, though, on why the images did not appear, even though they were in the Images folder in RH.

Lon

[Peter Grainge]

1] I am not following the connection with Photoshop. The problem is when you import from Word so what is the significance of editing those images before they go into Word? Please explain.

2] Is it that you are saving images to the RH folder and expecting to see them within the RH Project Manager? That only happens when you use the image within a topic.

3] When importing from Word I have seen the images appear in the topic but not in Project Manager. Manually creating the folder then makes them appear there. I therefore suggested the same thing. You would not have been able to create the folder if it was already in Project Manager so not sure quite what you did. Also you would not needed to put the images there using this trick. It seems like something is not being described exactly as it happened.

[Guest]

Hi, Peter!

1] I edit the images in Photoshop before adding them to RH, not Word

2] No; I do expect to see them within the topic. The problem was, I didn't see a specific few images in some topics

3] "You would not have been able to create the folder if it was already in Project Manager ..." Well, I did; suprised me, too.

Thanks for your help; I think we have the problem under control now.

lon

[Arrgh_Zombies_]

I had the same problem in RoboHelp 9. I imported a bunch of HTML files that linked to images. Everything worked in RH 9, except I couldn't see the images folder in the Project Manager pod. (The stupid folder "eyeglasses/globe" toggle icon is completely useless and confusing. Disappearing pseudofolders? What??)

So, in the Project Manager pod, I created a new folder that had the exact name as the real images folder in Window Explorer. That fixed the problem and I now have the images managed by the Project Manager pod.

I think that the "MS Windows emulator" in RH (also known as the Project Manager pod) gets confused about what's really in the MS Windows directory.

Anyway, your solution worked. Thank you.

Zombie