Lost Toolbars

[tswaters1]

Originally, I was missing just "Tables and Borders" and "Positioning".... I saw a post somewhere about messing with the registry to get them to display.... foolish me, I go right into the registry,

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\eHelp\RoboHTML\13.00\Components\4\

I notice a bunch of those values change when I mess around with toolbars and close.... soo, I changed one of the values as a test, "ToolBarFloating5" to 1.. and now I've lost my "View" toolbar too...

Can anyone help me in getting these back to the defaults? Or am I gunna have to resintall RoboHelp ?

[tswaters1]

Hmm.... well I'll take that as a "we can't help you". I'll reinstall RoboHelp and post the default contents of the registry directory when I'm finished...

[Captiv8r]

Hi tswaters1

Sorry, but your original post was a tad unclear. It's true that normally if a toolbar goes walkabout, you have to futz with the registry to coax it into showing again. But your post indicates multiple toolbars. So in this case, indeed it may just be simpler to reinstall RoboHelp HTML. However, sometimes even reinstalling may not work, as sometimes certain registry entries are left alone and not totally removed. But it's certainly worth a try.

Give the reinstallation a go and report back whether it corrected the issue. If so, terrific! If not, I'll do some digging and report back to you with how to coax the missing toolbars back into showing themselves.

Oh, and for the record, I advise to typically refrain from moving these beasties around. For the very reason of your post. They can suddenly perform a nifty disappearing act on you.

Cheers... Rick

[tswaters1]

Indeed they can.... I performed the reinstall, but sadly the toolbars are still not showing.
Also, I installed "RoboSource Control", which was previously not installed, sure enough the "version control" toolbar is now showing.

My own research reveals that the following toolbars are controlled in the above-listed registry directory:
1 - Formatting
2 - Objects
3 - Tables & Borders
4 - Positioning
5 - View

Each has the following keys, where = 1-5:
ToolBarDockID
ToolBarDockIdealRectCX
ToolBarDockIdealRectCY
ToolBarDockIdealRectX
ToolBarDockIdealRectY
ToolBarDockRectCX
ToolBarDockRectCY
ToolBarDockRectX
ToolBarDockRectY
ToolBarFloating
ToolBarFloatingWidth
ToolBarFloatingX
ToolBarFloatingY
ToolBarVisible

Also, in the 33 and 35 directory, there is a similar set of toolbar keys... I imagine those are for project toolbar & version control.

*sigh* I wish there was a "reinitilize robohelp registry" unitility of some sort....

[tswaters1 · Accepted solution]

Got it!

Ok, so after posting that note, I noticed that
ToolbarFloating was set to 1 for 3,4 & 5...

Also, I noticed that the ToolBarFloatingX & ToolBarFloatingY values were something rediculously high, like 36000+ for all 3 of those toolbars.... so I set the X&Y values to something more reasonable, restart robohelp... and voilla! there they are!

[MergeThis]

I'd be concerned as to how those astronomical settings came to be, in the first place.

That level of corruption is generally a byproduct of working the project on a network. Are you doing that? If you are, don't!


Good luck,
Leon

[RoboWizard]

Hi Leon

Yes, one might logically conclude that. However, I can personally attest that it has happened to me once or twice in the past. And I've never ever used RoboHelp on a network. Actually, come to think of it, I currently have my "View" toolbar with the same condition here on my laptop. I've just been to lazy to go fix it and continue to just use the menu to view the header/footer areas.

Personally, I believe it to be one of those "nifty little features". This is one reason I tend to always advise folks to pretty much leave the toolbars where they are and not move them around.

Cheers and happy Wednesday... Rick

[tswaters1]

Yes actually... when I first started out with RoboHelp, I was editing projects through the network. I think that lasted all of an hour before I realized it wouldn't fly.... RoboHelp over a network is so slow it's painful. I don't think this is the cause of the missing toolbars though.... like Rick said, a nifty little feature.

To easily fix it, set the ToolBarFloating to 1 for all toolbars that are missing, and set the ToolBarFloatingX & ToolBarFloatingY to something like 200x300.... well... not "easily" -- registry is never that easy -- but it works.

Also, I'm not sure if the wonderful Community Experts have any say in the matter, but I think this information should be available in the RoboHelp Knowledge Base.

[Peter Grainge]

If you want to write up an idiot's guide to the procedure I'd be quite happy to add it to Snippets on my site.

[tswaters1]

Awesome! A chance to be on the one -- the only -- Peter Grainge's webpage.

Here's the text I wrote up -- you can modify it as you want.

"
First off,
The instructions in this snippet include messing with the registry. It is recommended that whenever you mess with the registry to try and fix something that's broken, you should ALWAYS make a backup in case you mess it up even further.

The registry folder with all the toolbar keys is located here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\eHelp\RoboHTML\13.00\Components\4\

Within this folder there are keys that control where the toolbars reside and how they are docked:

ToolBarDockID
ToolBarDockIdealRectCX
ToolBarDockIdealRectCY
ToolBarDockIdealRectX
ToolBarDockIdealRectY
ToolBarDockRectCX
ToolBarDockRectCY
ToolBarDockRectX
ToolBarDockRectY
ToolBarFloating
ToolBarFloatingWidth
ToolBarFloatingX
ToolBarFloatingY
ToolBarVisible

There are 5 sets of these keys, one for each toolbar Where x=
1 - Formatting
2 - Objects
3 - Tables & Borders
4 - Positioning
5 - View


With that said, the instructions:

1) Ensure RoboHelp is CLOSED.

2) Open up regedit.exe

3) Navigate to the following directory:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\eHelp\RoboHTML\13.00\Components\4\

4) Identify the toolbar that is missing... where is the missing toolbar ( see X values above )

Change ToolbarVisible to 1
Change ToolbarFloating to 1
Change ToolbarFloatingX to 200
Change ToolbarFloatingY to 200

5) Open up RoboHelp. The toolbar's new position will be determined by the modified registry values. You should see that at about 200 left, 200 top, the missing toolbars are found! Move them around, dock them. Ensure you can see them.

6) Close RoboHelp. This will save the registry values and the problem should be fixed.