Upgrade from RH 8.02 to RH9.02 errors reading rhvariable.apj file

[rasterdan]

We recently upgraded from RH8.02 to RH9.02.  When I open my RH8 project in RH9 it obviously wants to upgrade so I say OK.  Within a few seconds, it errors saying something to the effect, error reading rhvariable.apj. 

At first the project was in version control so I thought maybe that was the problem so I reinstalled RH8 and did both upgrades to 8.02.  Removed my project from version control to a local folder.  My old project opens and works perfectly with RH8.  All of my ~1000 variables are there.  So I deleted the .cpd file and attempted to upgrade/convert the local copy to RH9.  The converted version of RH9 has ZERO variables and gave the same error about not being able to read the rhvariable.apj file.  I don't want to remake a thousand variables and then go place them in all the topics.  It's a part manual and variables are all over the place, it would be most painful and not worth upgrading. 

We had a lot of problems when we upgraded from RH7 to RH8.  It would be sure nice if we could upgrade for once and have software work as you would expect and just convert the project and ... work.

So, lets see, I looked at the rhvariable file and it is clean.  It had a few things that looked questionable so i deleted and verified all was ok in version 8 and all was fine.  Ran the RH9 conversion and can't read the rhvariable file.

Deleted the infamous .cpd file with no change, still not working.  So I have a working version of RH8.02 and a non working version of 9.02 from a variable perspective. 

We also recently upgraded our main project which at one time this project was part of and those variables came in fine.  We just have to go to the HTML view in order to save anything in our main project.  Nothing saves from the Design view and I have a discussion in Version Control open for that.  That project is in version control and for now we have a work around but it would be nice if we could just hit the save button and save the topic without having to change to HTML view just to save.  Very strange.

So, Peter ..et.al, got any ideas why my variables are not being read by RH 9.02 HTML?  We were thinking about calling for support from Adobe but they have been entirely less than helpful in the past so we are coming here first.  Many thanks for helping us get version 8 working 2 years ago.

dv

[Peter Grainge]

I have seen something like this and as far as I recall it was because that file was not in the RoboHelp 8 project. I copied it from another project and all was well.

Also it sounds like you are deleting the RoboHelp 8 CPD and then upgrading. I would not delete the CPD immediately prior to upgrading.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[rasterdan · Accepted solution]

Peter,

After reinstalling RH8, I was able to open and pull out of RH8 Version control 3.1.  Now with the topic local to my pc, it worked fine in RH8 but failed in RH9.  So I carefully inspected the rhvariable.apj file and found a couple lines that were not like the rest.

</variable>

        <variable>

            <name>14-x100-XT</name>

            <value>3010107830</value>

        </variable>

        <variable>

            <name>01-x902</name>

            <value>&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"&gt;Not available&lt;/span&gt;</value>

I changed that line to

</variable>

        <variable>

            <name>14-x100-XT</name>

            <value>3010107830</value>

        </variable>

        <variable>

            <name>01-x902</name>

            <value>Not available</value>

There were 2 or 3 other places where this occured.  I am certain this was the result of applying font style to the variable in RH8.  The strange lines were all text lines where a part was no longer available or was not ready to order yet.

After fixing this, RH9 was able to open the project locally and my variables seem to be ok.  I have to spot check the numbers but i think this font information in the variable line is what was confusing RH9.

There was one other line that had this:

</variable>

        <variable>

            <name>01-014</name>

            <value>&#160;</value>

which i changed to:

</variable>

        <variable>

            <name>01-014</name>

            <value>Blank</value>

This way i can search on Blank ot see if it actually appears in my project and/or fix the variable if necessary.

For now, this seems to have resolved the problem with this project.

Please have a look at my other problem in Source Control.  We can't save our topics in the main project using the Design mode but if we switch to HTML view, it saves instantly.  We can work with that for now but it sure is strange.  It is a big project, 125Mb compiled so not something that will fit in an email.

Thanks for answering.

dv

[Peter Grainge]

I did look at your other post but I don't do source control. The 9.0.2 release not contained details of a source control fix but it was for 64 bit systems.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[rasterdan]

Are you saying that if I were to open this project in source control on my other 64bit pc that it might behave differently ... possibly better?  I might give that a whirl, I did use my 64 bit system as a test for the above problem and it did not make any difference.

What the heck, I will try opening from that machine.

Regards,

dv