Properties grayed out in topic view

[peschoen]

I have a help system with several thousand files. In topic view, I can only select one at a time to change its properties. If I select more than one, "properties" is grayed out.

This wasn't always the case. When I started working on this project yesterday, I could select hundreds of topics and have right-click properties available. The number of topics I could select steadly decreased. Now it is one.

Does anyone know what is going on?

[Peter Grainge]

Is it the same after a reboot?

Maybe the CPD is getting bloated and there is a topic on my site about Opening Projects which includes trashing that file. That's only a maybe and I somehow doubt it is the cause. However, nothing else I can think of.

[HKabaker]

Perhaps beside the point, when you select a large number of files to revise properties, you should use the "Apply" button and close the Properties dialog with the corner X.

Don't click OK. You may have noticed it takes a long time to finish, and sometimes the change is not applied to all selected files.

As of RH 5, at least.

Harvey

[Captiv8r]

Hi Harvey

I'm curious about your suggestion. I know the "Apply" button came into being with Windows 95 (I think-maybe earlier?). I always understood its presence was there because it may take several layers of dialogs to reach a particular Windows setting. This allows the user to institute changes without dismissing the dialogs until they are happy.

I've seen many a user waste effort by clicking the good old "Apply" button, followed by clicking the OK button. But I've never known it to fail if I simply clicked OK without first clicking Apply. I've always understood that clicking OK was essentially the same. I'm advising Windows that it's "OK" to go ahead and "Apply" my changes.

Perhaps I'm wrong? Thoughts anyone?

Cheers all... Rick

[peschoen]

Thank you both for your replies.

Yes, it is the same after a reboot. I even reinstalled RoboHelp, and there is no change. This tells me it is something with my system, or with the help files. I don't know what a CPD is, but it is 2.4 meg. Is that bloated?

Thanks for the tip, HKabaker. I have a lot of trouble with changes not being applied. I am working with a .css, and am having nothing but trouble. I inherited this help system, and I think it is full of code that overrides the .css.

[Peter Grainge]

That sounds like a system created by importing from Word. Good luck!

Tell me the project is not on a network.

[HKabaker]

Rick,
I didn't intend to say you must close the X box after each apply. It's OK to apply one change and go to another item before closing the dialogue. It's the OK button that messes up sometimes.

Even when you hit the Apply button for a very large selection of topics, the OK button sometimes will undo the apply, not necessarily for all selected topics. Even when you've made just one batch change.

I think it's because OK tries to re-set all settings (that's why it takes forever), but does not correctly pick up the mass changes previously applied. Or maybe it takes forever because it can't find the new info and defaults to the existing settings.

A pain in the butt when you're trying to apply a stylesheet to a very large number of topics. Please don't ask me to define "a large number."

Maybe it's a space limit in RH, similar to the space limit for the number of characters in a batch of file names you want to import. Or maybe the OK button doesn't look in the right places.

Harvey