Old items appearing in Search tab - RoboHelp HTML 9

[cloudwoman23]

I recently changed an Internet link throughout a CHM project. Yet, when I enter the text of the old link (e.g., "old.link.com") on the Search tab, the search returns three topics that supposedly contain the text. They do not--they contain only the new link (e.g., "link.com"). I've searched the entire project folder for any occurrences of the old link text and cannot find it, so I assume the old text is stuck in an RH file somewhere that I can't access. Where would it be, and how do I get rid of the old text?

I'm using RoboHelp HTML 9.0.2. with Windows 7 Enterprise. Thank you!

[RoboColum_n_]

Is this only happening on one PC? If so, I don't think this is RH's fault at all. Instead I wonder whether the HH.DAT file needs blitzing. The are some implications of this which you can read about at the link below:

http://www.cmcandrew.com/robocolumn/archives/180

I'm not 100% sure where this file is on a Win7 machine but a search will find it.

[cloudwoman23]

I come on here about once a year with something weird like this that's always solved like magic with something obscure, but so far no luck this time. Your suggestion was excellent, sounded very plausible, but it didn't work. I found hh.dat and deleted it, even rebooted and then recompiled the help project, but the old stuff was still there. Your idea definitely seems on the right track, however. Any other heretofore-unknown-to-me files I can explore?

FYI, the hh.dat file in Windows 7 is located at: c:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\HTML Help.

[Amebr]

Perhaps check in the URLs folder to make sure all links are correct. I've occasionally found links like:

..\myfolder\child.chm::/A_Topic.htm

instead of:

child.chm::/A_Topic.htm

From memory this resulted in old topics showing up in the chm, for unknown reasons.

(I only have access to RH7, so locations may vary)

HTH,

Amber

[Peter Grainge]

How have you searched the project for the old term? Manually or with a search tool? If manually, use a search tool. If with a search tool, was it a mulitiline search tool?

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[cloudwoman23]

Hi Peter,

I've searched for the old term using both "Find and Replace in All Files" in RoboHelp (with HTML included) and Windows Search in the project folder. This project is one of several under a master project, and although the term wasn't ever in the master project itself, I also searched that folder just to see if the old term might pop up for some reason. But no. Then I searched the folder at the level above that, which includes every project in the master project plus some regular Word documents functionally unrelated to the projects and not part of RoboHelp, like specifications and test logs. The term did appear in some of those Word files, but in no HTML or other RoboHelp-related files.

Beth

[Peter Grainge]

Can you share the project with me? If you can, see the Contact page on my site and send the project as instructed there. Do make sure you include a link to this thread and please do not email the project direct.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Peter Grainge]

Got it.

You told me that StudentLoans.ed.gov was something that should not be found.

I searched on that and the results gave me three topics, one of which was Importing_In_Direct_Loan.htm

In that I found StudentLoans.gov. I think what is happening is that the search finding the common parts - StudentLoans and gov. It bothers me a bit that if you search on StudentLoan.gov (no "ed") when the search again finds common parts they are highlighted.

Regardless I think the problem is that the search is ignoring the full stops (periods) and finding any of what it sees as three words.

Maybe others with more knowledge of the CHM search can chip in?

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[cloudwoman23]

Peter, as always, thank you for your help. In searching for "studentloans.ed.gov," we've decided that Search is retrieving everything containing both "studentloans" and "ed.gov." The three topics it retrieves happen to be the only three in the project where both occur--for example, studentloans.gov and fsadownload.ed.gov in the preceding paragraph in one of the topics. Seems that Search was playing its own game while I thought the old studentloans.ed.gov was stuck in the project somewhere

This is not ideal but it's okay, as long as we can explain it to our customer. Thanks again.

[cloudwoman23]

Thanks for the reply, Amber. Only the new link is listed in the URLs folder, but good suggestion to look there.