Delete Broken Links

[Byronovich]

I would like to know how to delete everything in the broken links folder. I have a project that has migrated from a Word import thru a few editors, structure reorganizations, and other nefarious activities and it is time to clean up the resulting mess. I can't find a way to just delete the broken links - they no longer reference anything in the project.

I can't find a procedure to remove or resolve them - the broken links are irrelevant. Is there a utility that can just delete the broken links from the project or edit a file outside of the project?

[Peter Grainge]

Double click the broken links and it will enable you to access the topics that have the broken links. You have to find them there and remove them, otherwise you are pointing your users to targets that don't exist, in other words they will find the broken links that it is your job to clean up.

[Byronovich]

Thanks for the reply.
It took some doing, but I've managed to find and remove all of the index bookmarks brought in from importing Word docs. I didn't realize that those pesky things were a problem - we've been highlighting words and adding them to the index through RoboHelp when content changes and pretty much been ignoring the old ones. So, that is now cleaned up.

The only major disconcerting aspect to this clean up was that the broken links don't all clear out as you fix/remove them in the topics. Closing then reopening the RoboHelp project seemed to be the only way to confirm. Is there another way to refresh the broken links folder?

Thanks again, for your help.
Byron

[Peter Grainge]

Whenever I fix links, they clear up straight away. Not sure why you are not seeing the same result.

[Guest]

When you take out the bad link from the Index tab, are you clicking Save All? The index .hhk file doesn't get saved until you do, and I think that the Broken Links folder updates itself then.

HTH,
e

[Byronovich]

Yes, I've been doing Save All quite frequently to get everything updating in the process of cleaning up and revamping this project. I think the ones that don't clear up without reopening are the ones that have no reference. The Topic References dialog (opened by double clicking the broken link in the Broken Links folder) has a Delete button but it never seems to do anything for me.

So, I have to condition myself to change/modify the links THEN delete anything left over after that rather than deleting them all in a topic and starting over... opening and closing works too however.

Thanks!

[Guest]

I made the brilliant decision to "re-organize" a new version of an existing help project by numbering the folders sequentially in the order that I want the books of my TOC to appear. (This has worked for me before when I start a brand new project.) When I copied topics from the previous version of the help project into the new folders, I came up with about 161 broken links. I've looked at the Index keywords and noticed that they're pointing to two of the same topics - one from the old project and one from the new project. I deleted the Index keyword, then re-added it to the correct topic.

Now when I view my broken links (and also print a Broken Links report), there are "no references" to the link, since I removed and reassigned the Index keywords. How can I get rid of those "no references" after I double-click on a Broken Link? I'd like to get the folder empty and have zero entries in the Broken Links report. (i.e., I want a perfectly-compiled help project!)

Any tips/tricks would be appreciated.
ChristyG

[Guest]

I had to delete a lot of topics from a projecct - was creating a template from a fully evolved project to use for new ones. Long story short, even though I OK'd the message that asked if I wanted to remove all links in other topics from these deleted topics, there were more than a hundred broken links sitting there when I was done. Most of them - about 80 - had No References in the Broken Link repair window. They stuck there even after exiting and re-entering the project.

I renamed and rebuilt the .cpd file, came back in, and all those unreferenced links were gone.

[Guest]

quote:

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Originally posted by: lmarden
I had to delete a lot of topics from a projecct - was creating a template from a fully evolved project to use for new ones. Long story short, even though I OK'd the message that asked if I wanted to remove all links in other topics from these deleted topics, there were more than a hundred broken links sitting there when I was done. Most of them - about 80 - had No References in the Broken Link repair window. They stuck there even after exiting and re-entering the project.

I renamed and rebuilt the .cpd file, came back in, and all those unreferenced links were gone.

---

Thanks very much for your quick response! That did the trick!

I made a backup of the *.cpd file, deleted the original, re-opened RoboHTML and my project, then recompiled it. The few broken references that I had fixed in the Index keywords were no longer listed in the Broken Links folder! Yay! Now I just need to fix the rest of them.

cheers!
ChristyG

[Guest]

excellent! I am really not impressed with the CPD file's ability to keep up with changes in a project - past experiences just gave me a hunch this might work.

good luck with the rest of the housecleaning!