Some hyperlinks not appearing in generated Word doc

[MM_Acton]

When I generate a Word document, some of the hyperlinks show up, but not all. 

I looked at Peter Grainge's site under Printed Documentation and issues, but didn't find anything that matched my problem. I also looked here on the forum, but didn't find anything.

I have a feeling it's a problem with style mapping because the links that aren't showing up are those that appear in lists (both ol and ul).

In other words, if I put a link in a paragraph that's a regular <p></p> paragraph, it appears in the Word doc and the link itself works.

If I put it in a <li></li> paragraph, the link does not carry over; there is no blue underlining and if you mouse over what should be a hyperlink, the cursor does not change to a hand icon.

Can anyone provide any suggestions?

I'm using RoboHelp 9 and Word 2010.

[MM_Acton]

Further investigation reveals that it's not as I suspected. It's not just <li> -- and <li> tags are okay if they're within a table cell.

I added a link to a regular paragraph (<p>), but it didn't show up when I generated the Word doc.

I also tried generating a PDF. Didn't show up.

I tried the following combinations:

MS Word Template with Style_Mapping.dot

MS Word Template with a copy of Style_Mapping.dot that I just renamed

Stylesheet with None

Stylesheet with default.css

I created a new topic with 5 links.

The first was in a <p>. It showed up and worked.

The second was in an unordered <li>. It showed up and worked, but the following one didn't.

This is seeming to be more like a bug. I updated to 9.0.2.271 when it first became available. Is anyone else having problems?

[Peter Grainge]

Check that the failed links are not set as popups, that will cause them not be shown as links in the printed documentation.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[MM_Acton]

I compiled a new .chm file and tested it. All of them are regular links. Here's the actual HTML code underneath it. To me, it looks like they're all the same type of links.

<h1>About this test</h1>

<p>This is a test. This is a <a href="Adding_1099_Vendors.htm">link to

any</a> topic.</p>

<ul type="square">

    <li>So is <a href="AP_Credit_Memo_FAQ.htm">this</a></li>

    <li>And <a href="Close_Computer_Checks.htm">this</a></li>

</ul>

<p>And, of course, so are these:</p>

<ol type="1">

    <li>Enter a <a href="Choosing_Facilities.htm#facility_changing">facility</a>.

     This was to an anchor elsewhere.</li>

    <li>Do <a href="Deleting_Assets.htm">something</a>. </li>

</ol>

[MM_Acton]

I tried adding a topic to one of the sample projects, EmployeeCare, and that worked perfectly, so maybe my problem has nothing to do with the recent update to 9.0.2.

I started thinking about what I changed in my project setup recently (nothing) and what was different between the sample and my project.

The first difference I noticed was organization. When I create RoboHelp projects, I leave all the topics at the top level. That is, if I'm doing an accounting help system, everything is at the top and then I use the TOC to group things into Accounts Payable, Sales, and so on.

I have 285 topics at the top level. Could I be exceeding some memory limit in the generation? 

[MM_Acton]

AHA!  I think I've found what's causing the problem, though I don't know why it's happening.

When I generate the printed document, I'm generating just one "book" in the TOC. That is, when I select what is to be included in the printed doc, I select only the Accounts Payable book. When I do that, some links don't show up in the printed document.

If, however, I generate the entire project, all the links work. So, is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong when I try to generate just a book at a time?

I apologize for the long thread, but I wanted to let people know what I had tried. If it's any consolation, my repeated psots will provide a rich source of text for someone searching for a similar problem. 🙂

[RoboColum_n_ · Accepted solution]

That's a nice piece of detective work. If the links go to content that is not in your Accounts Payables book then this is as expected. After all you wouldn't want links going to content that didn't exist.

[MM_Acton]

Thanks for the compliment on my detective work. It will be a great comfort to me everytime I remember what an idiot I was for not noticing the obvious, LOL!

You're absolutely right; those links were going to topics that were not in the book I was printing!

[AIR-Chayah]

RoboHelp 10. I recently had a similar problem with hyperlinks not appearing in the PrintedDoc output, despite the following settings:

• Conditional Build Expression = None
• TOC = Default Table Of Contents, which contains all the topics that I want to appear in the output, but does not include every topic in the HTML Files (Topics) folder.
• Retain hyperlinks

By comparing hyperlinks in a number of topics with the Word page, I found that hyperlinks in the Word document are not active when the target topic is in the root folder, but is not included in the TOC.

In the Print Document Content dialog box, I typically select TOC>Show all topics and click the double right-pointing arrows so that all the topics in the default TOC are in the right pane.

When I realized that hyperlinks to root topics were not active, I added the topics to the document content. To do this, I selected Top Level Folder and then selected each topic whose Help icon is white (i.e. not in the TOC) and clicked the right-pointing arrow to move it to the Content pane.

However, to make me happy on a Friday afternoon: "Internal error encountered. Failed to generate Printed Documentation".

I tried generating again, and now RH appears to be stuck on "Updating images". This happened the other day, too, and I waited 10 minutes before understanding that RH would stay stuck forever and would never even crash .

Here's what I think will resolve this particular issue. I'll put the renegade topics in the Default TOC so that hyperlinks to them will be active. This is not a problem for my end users because I don't generate their output from the Default TOC -- my project has five other TOCs that are used to generate WebHelp Pro. I only use the Default TOC to:

• Edit topics in any module without having to open each individual TOC
• Generate a "Test ALL" SSL that contains everything, so that I can search more easily across modules
• Generate PrintedDoc for reviewers

Hope this information is useful to anyone who encounters this type of problem.
Carol

[AIR-Chayah]

Even though I moved the files to the Default TOC, PrintedDoc continues to fail. I'm think that a restart on Monday may clean up the problems.

"

Updating images...
Updating page numbers...
Updating page headers...
Updating Table of Contents...
Saving 'Test.docx'...
Failed to save 'Test.docx'...
Cleaning up temporary files...

Internal error encountered,  Failed to generate Printed Documentation.

"

[Peter Grainge]

Links failing to be links in printed documentation and printed documentation failing to generate are separate issues. The fact that the target of a link is not in the document will not cause failure to generate.

Also the location of a topic in the project will not be an issue.

I think we also need to be clear about the difference between the TOC in an output such as webhelp or CHMS and the TOC in printed documentation.

• With webhelp or a CHM you get all topics that are not excluded by a build expression, even if they are not in the TOC.
• With printed documentation you only get what is in the TOC.

Good luck on Monday.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[AIR-Chayah]

Thanks, Peter.

It never occurred to me that PrintedDoc would only include topics in the TOC. I only realized that this was happening when reviewers asked where some of my topics were in the Word version I generated for their review.

As of this morning, RH still will not generate the PrintedDoc for this project. I'll send the information to Microsoft since this seems to be a Word problem. It's strange because I've been generating Word version for review for RH9 and since updating to RH10.

Carol

[Peter Grainge]

It is not a Microsoft problem. Rh is failing to generate a document. You now have to ascertain why.

First thing to try is creating a new print layout, not a duplicate.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[AIR-Chayah]

Thanks, Peter. I will try to do so after we sort out some Source Control problems (I can't create a new layout until I can check it in to Source Control, which is currently locked down because of a release).

[AIR-Chayah]

It has occurred to me that PrintedDoc may be failing because RoboHelp can't check something in to Source Control that it needs to check in.

During a release cycle, I always open the project in Source Control.

Before experimenting with PrintedDoc, I had copied the project, thinking that I would then be working outside of Source Control. However, the copied XPJ still had all the Source Control information in it, leading to some unintended and undesirable problems, yet to be straightened out..