RoboHelp11 - Search doesn't find a PDF with word in Title

[Deb_Newman]

I am having challenges with some PDFs being found when you search. For example.

Using Sleep as the search word, the PDF document with a title "Sleep Apnea Guideline" should have been found. But it isn't. Many other documents and websites are found but not the one I expected.

And even when I search for Sleep Apnea, the document is not found.

The primary layout is Multiscreen HTML5.

So far I have managed to solve every problem that my client has asked to solve so that they can use RoboHelp as the method to deliver a large number of reference documents and websites. Unfortunately, this one issue my stop everything. I am not able to explain why the document cannot be found.

Am I doing something wrong?

[Peter Grainge]

I just created a PDF with the filename Sleep Apnea Guideline.pdf, added it as baggage and created a link to it. I generated both WebHelp and Multiscreen outputs and it worked fine in both.

Have you checked the PDF is in the folder to which you are generating?

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Deb_Newman]

Hi Peter,

Yes, I double checked that the baggage file was there. I even removed it and started over again. The file still wasn't found. The topic that the file was in was found but the actual PDF did not list in the results. I've used both sleep and sleep apnea but that file does not list.

I even added quotes around "sleep apnea" to see if that would help but it didn't find it.

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

Hopefully Peter won't mind my offering up a couple of things to look at.

1. Are there other PDF documents that are able to be searched? If not, perhaps you excluded them from search.

2. If it's just this one PDF, are you even able to select the text inside it? It's quite possible that someone created a PDF from a scanned image. In that case, there would be no text to find.

Cheers... Rick

[Deb_Newman]

Yes, there are other PDF documents and they can be found, I made sure that PDFs are not excluded.

Even if it were a scanned document, the file name should be found. I am not sure how I can check if a document was scanned or not. I did a search for sleep while in the PDF and it found the words. Only the topic that this is in displays in the list but the actual PDF file (with sleep apnea in the name) does not list separately.

Here is what I have in the topic:

Here is the baggage file name.

[Captiv8r]

One thing I note from the image is that this particular PDF has a longer file name than the others.

I'd try shortening the file name and see how it goes.

Cheers... Rick

[Deb_Newman]

I shortened the name to Sleep_Apnea_Guideline.pdf

Unfortunately, it still didn't find it. I also checked the SSL folder to be sure that the file was in the list and it was there in My RoboHelp project and in the published version and the . I thought I'd check another search result using Stool and the search found the PDF. So search is working as far as I can see. I just don't understand why this one file isn't found.

[Captiv8r]

Hmmm, unless others have a suggestion, I'm going to suggest you perform what we call a "sanity check". To do this, you create a totally new project and add the PDF to that project. Generate and perform a search.

If it works, you know there is some issue with the other project and this file.

If it fails, you know the issue is likely with this PDF.

Cheers... Rick

[Deb_Newman]

Good idea Peter. I will do that and let you know what happens. It's a great suggestion and one that I hadn't thought of.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

LOL – “Peter”!

[Deb_Newman]

Okay, so I created a new Project file. Created a topic called Respiratory. Added the baggage file called Sleep_apnea_guidelines.pdf. Then I inserted a hyperlink to that file.

This is what displayed in the search results:

It only displayed the topic name - no PDF listed.

[Deb_Newman]

Hello again.

I opened the PDF and realized that the file is SECURED and password protected. I am wondering if it can't be found by RoboHelp because of these settings. It's a 2011 guideline so I am not sure if the older versions of Adobe Acrobat would have also limited the ability to find text in the PDF.

[Captiv8r]

Looks like you found your answer!

I'd say there's no "wondering" about it. You added it to a totally new project and the new project behaves exactly as your current project.

Cheers... Rick