Restoring previously published topics to editor

[jasona66572020]

Hello all,

Back again, and I have another question regarding topics and file management between the Project Manager and the TOC...

As you may or may not recall, I have been brought on board an organization to help them streamline and develop consistency in the Help files for a number of products they produce.  The products, while very similar in appearance and function, do have unique UI elements and some features that are specific to a particular product.  So, for ease of explanation, let's assume that the product is available on Windows, OSX, iOS and Android.  I now have the Project Files organized accordingly:

Windows Product (folder)

Topic 1

Topic 2

Topic 3

OSX Product (folder)

Topic 1

Topic 2

Topic 3

etc...

My problem started with a presumed understanding that:

1. The Project Manager Pod will show me all files associated with my Project, whether they are published or not . . .

2. The TOC is a list of all files that are published in the order they are presented.

Assuming this is correct, I went ahead and duplicated (or so I thought) the topic files I was looking at the TOC for one Product area into another product area (Windows to OSX for example).  After doing that, and editing the screen captures and text to the new OS Help files, I realized that I had not copied, but moved the files.  So, now the topics for Windows have been over-written with the Mac content. 

I have not published yet either internally for the team to review, or to the company website, so the prior topic files for Windows are still available somewhere. 

My question is:  What's the best way to restore the Windows versions of the topic files while also retaining the Mac edited versions in RH 2015?

[Willam_van_Weelden]

The easiest way is to get an old version from a backup and restore the backup. Then redo the work for the Mac version. If you create a new folder in the project manager, you can import the files from the broken project.

If this is not possible: What is the content that is still available to you? Do you have a WebHelp output with the Windows content?

If you have the files still, you can import them into the project, but they will require cleanup. Rick outlined the steps required: October 2004 - Banishing the sorcery. If you have a lot of topics, you can also opt for my paid, automated solution: http://www.helpessentials.com/downloads/robohelp-recovery-scripts/

If you can provide some more information on what files are still available to you, we may be able to come up with other solutions.

[jasona66572020 · Accepted solution]

There were only about ten pages, so it was just easier to edit the topics manually one-by-one.

The best information I gleaned from this experience is that when updating content, to never go by the TOC file references as these don't respect their parent folders - always perform edits/updates from the Project Files pod!

Small suggestion to Adobe Developers who put out Robohelp:

1. Learn the concept of intuitive design and implement it!

2. Never release a new product without any support/documentation files!

It's absolutely astounding to me that in putting together Robohelp 2015, they were unable to produce any content for...I don't know, maybe a Help File resource explaining what each component is and some best practices for usage...

After all, isn't that one of the fundamental features of Robohelp to begin with?!?!?!

For William, thanks for the link to "Oct 2004 - Banishing the sorcery".  With all respect though, referencing someone using RH 2015 to an article that is over a decade old that speaks to an iteration of RH that is over five legacy iterations out of date, and to a paid 3rd party solution seems to be not much of a reference at all...the problem here is the lack of native support for doing something as simple as duplicating a project.  I should not have to go into my OS to do this - the PRODUCT should have this functionality.  Is the audience that small where Adobe has decided to pretty much polish a turd and call it "new" and the target demographic just accepts this?

If RH were a truly useful solution for Tech Writers, this should have been addressed ages ago...but then again, I should have known better than to expect this from Adobe.