TOC, Index, Search not displaying in Internet Explorer

[manguefille]

This issue is in Robohelp 10, with a project that uses merged projects with a WebHelp output. This project was just upgraded from Robohelp 7 to Robohelp 10; prior to the upgrade, there were no issues with display in the published help. The project is based in a network folder and the webhelp is published to a different network folder. No settings or file locations were changed during the upgrade. When I completed the upgrade, generated and published all merged projects and then generated and published the master project, then attempted to open the complete webhelp from the index .htm file from its network folder, the TOC does not display and the Index and Search functions don't work in Internet Explorer, but all of the above works fine in Firefox. The project is not checked into Source Control. Any insight as to what I can do to correct this is appreciated.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

What flavour of IE? There are issues with IE10 & 11 right now that require fixes & hacks to get it working.

[manguefille]

I'm working on IE9.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Is your RH all patched up?

[manguefille]

Yes it is.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

What about your settings in IE9 – maybe a security update tightened things up – having the help on a network server is the same as having it locally on your c:\ drive as far as MS and Chrome are concerned. What happens if you compile the sample project to a local c:\drive? Does it behave?

[manguefille]

Publishing it to a local folder yields the same results. Should it be generating it locally as well? Is there something I should look for in my IE settings that could be responsible?

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

First things first – I’m presuming you’ve enabled “Mark of the Web” right?

[manguefille]

Yes I have.

[Peter Grainge]

I would try generating to the same drive as the project and then try with both the project and generate folder on your hard disk if that fails. Publishing can be to anywhere, it is the project and generate folders that are important. Publishing is simply a process to get the generated content onto the server. If the generated content is wrong, so will be the published content.

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@petergrainge

[manguefille]

The project/generate location doesn't seem to be the issue. I took the backup version of the project folder I created, returned it to the folder name/location where the updated project was, and regenerated and published this version using Robohelp 7 (obviously the backup had not been updated to 10) and the exact same generate/publish locations on the network. Using this method, the problem does not occur. But with the exact same process and locations using the updated project, the problem persists. I did try moving the updated project folders from the network to a local spot, and this unfortunately did not solve the issue.

[Peter Grainge]

What happens if you take a copy of the backup, without the updates, and upgrade that and then generate? I am wondering if something got broken during the updating as opposed to upgrading.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[manguefille]

I think I'm a little unclear on what you mean. When I was using the word update, I was referring to upgrading the project from Robohelp 7 to 10. There were no changes made to the project between upgrading and generating, with the exception of correcting some issues that came up in the upgrade process. Technically, there are multiple projects because there are merged projects. The only thing that was "changed" after upgrading were in a couple of situations where a merged project had a number of project files moved to the broken links folder erroneously, even though nothing had been moved or altered in the process.

[Peter Grainge]

Thanks for clarifying that.

If I am reading correctly you are generating to a network drive. Although you don't think that is the issue, locating the project on C and generating to C is the first thing I would try.

If that fails, we then need to determiine if this is a project specific error. Download the Rh10 merged help demo from my site and see what happens with that.

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@petergrainge

[manguefille]

What I'm finding is that this is a very isolated problem. This project consists of multiple merged projects, and the merged projects are publishing just fine in the output folder (which is in a network folder). When I open the main .htm file to access the help from the publish folder, the TOC, etc. doesn't appear, but when I go into the merged projects folder within the publish folder and open one of the individual .htm's for one of the merged projects, these are opening fine, with all TOC, Index, etc. functions displaying properly. I'm not sure why it would publish all the individual merged projects correctly but not the main one. By the way, I looked over the setup for the generate/publish for the main project and everything looks as it should. Nothing was changed during the upgrade. And when I publish the backup project which was not upgraded with all of the same setups, it works fine.

[Peter Grainge]

I notice in the first post that you generated the parent last. That should be generated first.

Next try using another browser to see if that is where the problem arises.

Then try downloading the merge within merge demo from my site and see if that has the same problem. Work locally with that.

If that works OK, then I'm back to suggesting you generate locally.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[manguefille]

It looks as though the problem did end up being related to the version of IE. An upgrade to IE10 ended up making the difference, but with IE9, users were having the problem universally.