RH8 project aborting during primary layout generation

[DebWriter]

Hello!
I am using RH HTML 8 and was absolutely loving it until I ran into a problem in one project.
Today, everytime I try to generate my primary layout, it crashes. In the Output View, the last message I see, is "updating files...," then kaboom.
Today I created a bunch of user variables and was substituting them in my text in the topics.

I also noticed that I have two copies of the same project. (Not a good thing, hope that didn't screw me up.) One is in My Robohelp Projects folder and the other is in the directory where all the rest of my projects are. I really can't remember if I copied that project to the My Robohelp Projects folder or not, but it is the only project in that folder and that is the one that is crashing. I compared the files dates in both projects and both have the same info from the last date I worked on the project. So they look identical except for the changes I made today.

I opened the copy that is NOT in My Robohelp Project and generated a primary layout and it worked just fine. The difference is that all my user variable changes that I made today are in the project that is crashing. Poo.

So, my questions are:
Has anyone heard of a problem with user variables?
Is there a way to troubleshoot my crashing project? I don't know where to begin.
Any thoughts on what could be happening here?

Thanks so much! I hate to lose all my work today so if somebody might have a clue, I'd love to hear.....
-Deb

[MergeThis]

Until you figure it out, you might try swapping the updated rhvariable.apj file from the bad project to the good one.


Good luck,
Leon

[DebWriter]

What exactly happens when I copy the rhvariable.apj file? I'm not familiar.
I suppose it provides knowledge of the new variables, but do I still have to go through all the text and re-establish where they go?
The good old project was never using variables.

Thx for writing!
-Deb

[RoboColum_n_]

That's right Deb. The rhvariable.apj file contains all the variables contained in a project. Therefore copying the file from one project to another just copies the variables. Means you don't have to manually create them. Copying the file does not add the variable to the topic. You'll need to do this manually.

[DebWriter]

Thank you Leon and Colum, that will be a bit better than starting over from scratch.
Appreciate it!
-Deb