Phantom Broken LInks

[byrdye]

I have a page that persits in claiming it has a broken link. I have managed to isolate it to a link to one particular topic. I can link to any other topic, no problem. I can link to that particular topic from any other page, no problem, it's only on If I link to that one particular topic on that page.  Once I link to that topic (and save) I immediately see a  a broken link in Project Manager - but  the topic line in the Topic References dialog is blank. I have tried deleting and recreating both pages, same result. I've dealt with weirdness in RH before, but this one has me TOTALLY bumfuzzled.

The phantom broken link doesn't seem to do any damage, when I test, the link works just fine, so I can probably safely ignore it, but I'm too much of a perfectionist to do that.

Anyone have any clues?

Thanks!

Jo Byrd

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi Jo and welcome to the RH community.

Does the HTML give you any clue as to what is going on? What happens if you create a link to the topic in another topic and copy/paste it into the problem topic? I hope this doesn't leave your derrière too fuzzled .

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Read the RoboColum(n) for mutterings on RoboHelp, Technical Communication Suite and technical communication.

[byrdye]

Nope! Nice try but no kewpi doll! I did exactly as you suggested. The link didn't appear as broken in the other topic, the moment I pasted it into that topic, there it was again. As I said, I've deleted BOTH pages and recreated them only to have it show up. Every time. This may end up as one of life's little mysteries.

Jo

[RoboColum_n_]

Have you tried renaming the projectname.cpd file and reopening the project. That often solves problems such as this.

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Read the RoboColum(n) for mutterings on RoboHelp, Technical Communication Suite and technical communication.

[byrdye]

Ah, the sometimes evil cpd file! Unfortunately, it didn't cure the problem. Nice thought, though, that frequently does cure the problem. Rats.

Jo

[RoboColum_n_]

Gadzooks!! A bit of a left fielder here but I'm wondering if it maybe time to take a look inside the projectname.hhp file. In the [FILES] section, is the file displayed with the exact same name as is used in the topic file name and the link? Also what happens if you craete a new project and import the topic with the phantom link?

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Read the RoboColum(n) for mutterings on RoboHelp, Technical Communication Suite and technical communication.

[Captiv8r]

Hi Jo

Colum, sorry for butting in here. Hopefully you will pardon my intrusion. It's well intentioned.

I see Colum is inferring you are creating CHM output. Is that accurate? If not, I'm very doubtful that examining the HHP will help you out here. Actually, if you haven't created CHM output from this project before, there probably isn't an HHP to be found!

In reading through the thread I noticed something that needs a bit of clarification.

Earlier you said:

I have managed to isolate it to a link to one particular topic. I can link to any other topic, no problem. I can link to that particular topic from any other page, no problem, it's only on If I link to that one particular topic on that page.

Are you saying you are linking to a bookmark on the page in question? If so, what did you use for the bookmark name?

Cheers... Rick

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[byrdye]

There's no chm or HHP file, Rick, so that's not the issue.

But to clarify, the link is to a topic, not a bookmark. The topic title and file name are the same, too.

No clue as to why this is happening, it really doesn't make much sense to me. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to affect anything but my obsessive desire for perfection!

Jo

[byrdye]

I saw Ricks' response before I saw  yours, Colum, but there's no HHP file. Haven't genereated anything yet, and when I do, it'll be WebHelp.

Jo

[Guest]

Hi Jo,

I had a project displaying similar behaviour to what you describe. The links worked when viewed in Internet Explorer, and I could not see anything wrong in the code.

It was not until I compiled a .chm file that I realised that they were not recognised by Robohelp.

After much trial and error and frustration, I tried moving the file up one level in the folder system - and the broken links were resolved.

Regards,

Lisa

[byrdye]

I just created a chm file, and the links work just fine...but I managed to unearth a different issue: a style not holding! Since there's a good chance this may end up as a chm file rather than WebHelp, it's dig around some more, I guess.

Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Jo

[RoboWizard]

Hi there

The fact things work in a CHM file suggests the topics that are causing the broken links are actually one or more folder levels higher than the root level of your project.

For example, your project may reside at C:\Projects\MyProject

But you may have somehow inserted links to topics that sit in C:\Projects

In WebHelp, things would likely break. And in the RoboHelp editor, these links would show as broken. But when you create a CHM file, the compiler will try and resolve links. So as long as the topics you are linking to are found by the compiler, the process includes them.

Methinks you have some detective work yet to do. ANY link beginning with ../ is suspect and worthy of checking. One way you might isolate this easily would be to copy the project, then begin moving all topics to the root from inside RoboHelp. Then perform a find across all topics looking for ../. That should reveal the culprits.

Cheers... Rick

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