Old Robohelp Compatibilities

[chortlehoort]

I have an old Robohelp file that was authored in Robohelp 3.1. I downloaded and installed the Robohelp 6 Trial Version and am able to create new files, so the installation went fine. However, trying to open up with old MPJ file causes two alerts to be thrown.

"Files from a 6.0 project already exist in this project folder and may be more up to date than the previous version you are about to convert. Do you want to continue and overwrite the converted files?"

Clicking OK in that dialog produces this message...

"Open project was canceled or the application was unable to load database for 'My project file path'"

The timestamp on my MPJ file is 10/21/2005 so I know that it could not have possibly been converted to 6.0 previously. I'm looking for any suggestions on how to properly open up this file in Robohelp 6. Any help would be immensely appreciated, no matter how bizarre!

[Peter Grainge]

The message is "Files from a 6.0 project already exist in this project folder..." which isn't quite the same as saying the MPJ file has been converted. Is it possible some other new project got pointed there? Do you see any XPJ files in the folder?

[chortlehoort]

Yes, there is also an XPJ file in the original project folder, timestamped 7/7/2004.

I'm not sure when Robohelp 5(?) came out, but perhaps someone in the past already attempted to update this project from 3.1 and I am unaware of it.

Is there some way to find out what version of Robohelp was used to create the project? I've looked in all of the non-standard file types and all I can find out is when the project was originally created and other non-essential information.

[Peter Grainge]

Try opening the project by pointing RH6 at the XPJ file.

[chortlehoort]

Ok, if I attempt to open it up with the XPJ file, the first prompt no longer shows, however I still see...

Open project was canceled or the application was unable to load database for "C:\path\to\file\ES_Help.cpd"

Then I thought that the message seems as if it might be trying to access a file under another account than mine, however I see that it is running with my credentials (I'm sysadmin, domain admin, and machine admin) so permissions isn't the issue.

I took a peek inside the CPD file and noticed the "Standard Jet DB" text in the header, so I opened it up in Microsoft Access, but none of the tables that I see provided any clues.

[Peter Grainge]

With a copy of the project, trash the CPD file and try again. I am assuming that path is not about a mile long.

[chortlehoort]

I still get the same error message. One odd thing I notice?

Double-click the XPJ file to open the project and it creates a CPD file of size 325.632

Double-click the MPJ file to open the project and it creates a CPD file of size 557.056 and automatically deletes the XPJ file

[Peter Grainge · Accepted solution]

I believe there is a limit to the number of files you can open in the trial, 25 or so. Perhaps that is the issue?

Try creating a new project and import say 20 files. Do you have problems with that?

[chortlehoort]

That must be it, and it creates a perfect catch-22 for us. We want to verify that this project can be imported into Robohelp 6 so we can be sure we want to upgrade, and of course, we can't import the project into the trial version to get this verification.

Anyone out there willing to try to load our help project into Robohelp 6 to verify we can upgrade?

[Peter Grainge]

The zipped up size would be useful to know.

Strip out previous outputs so that the zip is only the source files and then post the size.

[chortlehoort]

Zip size without HTML and PDF files is 4.7 MB

[Peter Grainge]

I sort of need the HTML source files. 🙂 I hope you just mean the output files.

On PDF, are those files that your topics link to. If so best to leave those so that you can be happy the links still work.

As long as that doesn't add more than a couple of mb, email should work my end so email via my site.

If that fails because of limits at your end, email me and I will send FTP instructions.

It would help if you could do this in the next hour or so. It's late here and I want to download it tonight rather than have a big download in the morning.

[chortlehoort]

Ok, with the HTML files back in the zip, it's up to 8.2 MB. Is that over your email attach limit?

[Peter Grainge]

It should be OK. Give it a go.