Searching in compiled help can hang for minutes, other times it works fine...

[sherylslopey]

We have a couple users complaining that when they do a search on help, sometimes it can hang for minutes before returning results, eventually. Sometimes even waiting 5 minutes, they never get results. They have to close and try again. Thie current project was built using RoboHelp 8. Trying the previous version of our software, which was built using RoboHelp 3, the results return within seconds. If the results do eventually return, it's not like the word is never found.

We have not been able to reproduce this internally, even using the same search criteria.

It is a webhelp project. The person that I have been working with most to troubleshoot this is using Windows XP.

Seems like something because of our upgrade to RH8, but we can not reproduce it. Any ideas? I read all the forum posts related to searching that I could find, but did not find anything so sporadic.

They are getting frustrated with it. Thanks.

[Amebr]

Perhaps check if the project is optimised for web or LAN. I think it's a setting in the Single Source Layout.  (Sorry, I don't have a copy of RH at the moment to check the exact location.)

Amber

[sherylslopey]

Optimize speed is set for Web; not Local PC ( Internal network)

[Peter Grainge]

Change it to Local. It will still work and may solve the problem.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[sherylslopey]

Thanks for the input. He still has an intermittant problem. Sometimes the Search results come back right away, othertimes, after two minutes, he is still waiting for the results.

Usually he accesses the application and help through the network. We had him copy help to his local drive. That works fine. Also, the previous version, built using RoboHelp 3, works fine.

Any other ideas?

Thanks!

[Peter Grainge]

If this is only occurring at one location and is intermittent, it sounds rather like the network is the issue. Suggest the person concerned speaks to their IT people.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[sherylslopey]

I know it happens for other users as well. This one person has been the most vocal about it and also the most helpful with answering questions and we tried to troubleshoot and tried different options.

Appreciate your input. Thanks.

[Peter Grainge]

Other users or other locations?

What I am getting at is whether you can pin it to certain networks.

Have you tried giving the helpful user direct access to the help? The test to run would be when they have trouble getting search results the normal way, they then open the help direct from the server rather than via the app. Are the results different?

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[sherylslopey]

Now besides our internal person having the issue with searching, a customer reported the same thing. They upgraded to a version of the software that use RH8 (prior version was using RH3)

The customer has been doing some testing and found that this works in Firefox and Chrome, but not IE. They also have another environment that is using the newer version with a combined app/web, that works fine (even with IE). As such, their suspicions is that this is related to a separated web/app installation.

They tried IE7, IE8 and IE9, none work.

FYI, our internal user, we did give access to a local version and it was okay.

[Peter Grainge]

Please clarify what you mean by "a separated web/app installation".

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[sherylslopey]

Turns out this was a different issue.

Our internal issue still has the issue with the search performance. We did have him try installing help locally. That works, but something happened with the upgrade from RH3 - RH8 and something in his environment.