Robohelp HTML crashes after emptying a project

[John_BW]

Hi,

I use Framemaker to do most of my authoring, and then import the files into RoboHelp HTML to generate the HTML help. As the first step in importing the files, I delete all the topics, TOC entries, and IX entries from the RoboHelp project. If I don't do this, I end up with duplicates all over the project.

After I empty out the project, and try to save it, RH goes belly up and I have to click through two sets of the "Adobe Robohelp 7 has encountered a problem and needs to close" dialog boxes. Having clicked "Send Error Report" a dozens of times, I'm wondering if there is anything else I can do about this problem.

Thanks,
John B.

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi John.
Is this problem specific to a particular project? If so, has it only just started happening?

[Authorgirl]

I have just had a similar problem whereby RH hung if I tried to add or rename a folder in Project Manager. It happened on all projects so I re-installed RH and it's now fine.
Not quite the same issue I know but it might help.

Helen

[John_BW]

Hi Colum,

No, this problem happens to all my projects (dozens of them), and has been a constant problem since upgrading to the Adobe Tech Comm suite (Robohelp 7). It did not happen quite so much in the previous version of RoboHelp, and I don't remember it happening at all in RoboHelp XP.

BTW, I'm running on an Intel dual-core processor, 2 gb RAM, Windows XP SP3 (Dell Dimension). The same problem happened under Windows XP SP2.

Thanks,
John B.

[Captiv8r · Accepted solution]

Hi all

John, I couldn't help but notice that you said you are trying to delete ALL content from the project. And here is where my gut is telling me the issue lies.

My thought is that you might take the following approach. Create a single topic. One that will never exist in Framemaker. Only in RoboHelp. Then forget about that topic. Never delete it or anything. Then when you do your clean out, I'd take this approach.

Flush the TOC and the Index. Shouldn't matter which order you use. Just that you flush these first. I say flush these, as they depend on the content in the topics.
Flush the Topics. Well, all but the single topic that should remain.

My thought here is that if you are deleting everything from the system, RoboHelp is going belly up with no topics. And if you deleted the Topics first, RoboHelp may be gagging on gobs of updates as it wildly is trying to track all the sudden broken links to TOC and Index items. That's why I suggested these as a first step.

Please give that a go and let us know if it helps... Rick

[John_BW]

Hi Rick,

I tried doing as you suggested, and sure enough, RoboHelp did not crash (at least the two times I tried it). I'm not thrilled at having to add an empty topic to work around the problem, but it will save some time waiting for RH to close and then restart.

From my two-trial test, it didn't matter if I cleared out the TOC and IX before deleting the topics, or after deleting the topics.

Thanks,
John B.