How can I multi-find and replace relative paths to external topics?

[noflyguy]

I am using RH7 and publishing to a company server share. External topics are saved on the same server share and linked on my local drive to create a relative link. How can I do a multi-find and replace on the relative links to change the path to the external docs? The paths do not show up in the Topics List because they are relative, not absolute. Although changing all of the many paths manually would be job security, I would like an easier fix. Thanks for any help.

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

If I were in your shoes I'd handle this as follows:

Create a redirect topic for each of the links in question. The redirect topic would store the ultimate (and correct) link. Then from any topics needing the link, you link to the redirect topic (which is part of your help system).

The beauty in this is that if you have a page that is linked to from perhaps 100 topics and the link changes for some reason, you only change it once in the redirect topic and all is well.

Cheers... Rick

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[noflyguy]

I don't quite understand all of your post, but I don't think I clarified my needs sufficiently in my original post. The issue is trying to change many relative links that are already linked to external topics (docs). In some large projects we now have no way to find what Topics have links to what external docs. I have been looking for a report that would tell me what Topics in the project are linked to a specific external doc, but the relative links don't show up. I think the barn door is already open and can't be closed. What am I missing? Thanks again.

[Captiv8r]

Hello again

Likely your best bet at this point is to use a good Multi-File Find and Replace utility.

While RoboHelp has one included, it often fails. So we typically recommend something like FAR (Find And Replace) or BKReplace.

Click here to visit the FAR site

Click here to visit the page for BKReplace

Cheers... Rick

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[MergeThis]

Looks like you might need to start by running a link checker against your projects (Xenu is a good product). You can tell it to create a report based on links (a specific link, followed by all pages that link to it) or on pages (a specific page, followed by all broken links within it). I think the former would be helpful to you.

As to Find/Replace, we use FAR, which is awesome. You can even establish run-time variables, so that everything between old/new start/end strings is carried over without change. This also might be helpful in your situation.

If you feel like providing an example of a "bad" link and a "good" link, we might have further suggestions.

Good luck,

Leon