RH7 WebHelp: Wrong Search Results - problem.

[Guest]

RoboHelp HTML 7 > WebHelp. Search tab.
1. In the compiled webhelp, when I search for "user", it finds all words that contain the characters "us", such as "because", "using", "just" etc.
When I searched for "ADS" (product name) it found every word containing "ad".
When I tried "ADS" again just now, it finds "ADS" in the four relevant topics OK, but also returns 18 topics where the word does not exist and no text is highlighted at all.
If I search for "planning" it finds all occurrences of "plan".
The whole thing seems to be in random behaviour mode, and my client would like it fixed. So would I!
Same problem whether I use IE7 or Firefox.

2. Another irritation is that if my target word is in normal font and follows a word in bold font, the space between the two words is omitted.

Any ideas anyone?

[Peter Grainge]

I think the second point is covered in Using RH7 on my site.

I can't investigate the first one today. Try a new project with a few topics. Sounds like something has got screwed up.

[RoboWizard]

Hi Phillip

Help files have a wonderful little feature called an Index. You may wish to advise your client as to its use and how much more powerful it can really be as compared to Search. It really dismays me as to how many folks totally ignore the Index in favor of Search. I don't think I really need to delve too deeply into why they would be better off using Index over Search. That much is evident in just what you wrote. If you construct an Index correctly, it's like 1,000 times better than any Search mechanism would ever be.

So there you have it. My own $.02 worth. Which, when adjusted for current economic conditions turns out to be approximately $.000000002. (Give or take a few zeroes)

Cheers... Rick

[Guest]

Hello Rick,

Yes - I agree with you totally - a well-built Index does the job, and I teach this in my Courses.

However, I cannot remove a full text search capability, and this search tool just is not working properly.

I checked some old webhelp guides in case it was a problem with the one I'm working on now, and the same problem exists. If I search for "using", it also finds every word that contains the first two characters "us", such as "cause", "adjust", "stylus", etc.

Do you get the same problem?

I'm hoping someone has a fix suggestion...

[Captiv8r]

Hi Phillip

You asked if I get the same problem. I suppose I would if I were to focus on search.

The thing is, even though I use RoboHelp on nearly a daily basis, I no longer do it in a corporate setting. All my use of it is purely personal and when conducting classes on it.

Have you tried the following? Try adding the errant words to your Phrase List (even if they are single words) and see if that seems to solve the issue. If so, there's a workaround. But if it were me, I'd stress to my user/client/whatever that they are seeing a weakness with searching overall and I would stress (and show them) how useful the Index can be if given a chance. You might be surprised at the outcome.

Cheers... Rick

[Guest]

Hello Peter,

- the fix for the missing spaces worked - thanks for putting it on your site.

Still need a fix for the bad search problem.

[Guest]

Hello Rick,

Thanks for the idea.

This has to be a BUG if it searches on as few as the first two letters of my search word, not the whole word as a minimum. I have added words to the Stop List, so the client can search for his product module name "ADS" without coming up with too much rubbish; but I can't create a universal list to stop all bad search results for all search words.
How on earth did this bug avoid scrutiny and fixing if it's been around as long as it has? I guess it's because, until RH7, there was no highlighting of search words in the topics.
All it needs is a search for "beginning with" instead of "contains" and make sure they use the complete search word.

Best regards.