RoboHelp Question - I'm desperate!!!

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Michelle Parcell reports a RoboHelp problem: <<I have had to reassign a few
topic IDs within the system. I need to assign one of the "old" IDs (which
was used for a topic that now has a different ID) to another screen, but
Robo won't release the old one.>>

Two things you may need to do. First, try assigning a temporary new map ID
number to the old topic whose map ID (let's say it's "50") you want to use
elsewhere. Pick a number like 9999 so that you won't be overlapping any
other numbers. Now assign the number 50 to the new topic. If you're lucky,
that's all you need to do, other than picking a more reasonable number for
the old topic.

If that doesn't work--and it may not--here's step 2: Open the RoboHelp
application itself if it's not already open--that's the one with all the
tabs and directory windows that launches as soon as you open a Word file
created in RoboHelp. It's where you manage your RoboHelp projects. Navigate
to the Map IDs directory, where you'll see the complete list of topics.
Right-click on the topic that contains the ID number you want to use and
edit its properties so that it has a temporary new number (e.g., 9999). The
rest of the process is the same. Most likely, you won't have to do this step
unless the old topic has been deleted and RH simply forgot to delete it from
the list of map IDs.

<<I've made sure to re-link anything that's directed to the screen that now
has a new ID, hoping it would help Robo let go of
the old ID, but it didn't seem to make a difference.>>

It's also possible that you're being bitten by a design feature (read "bug")
that governs how RoboHelp works. By default (version 9.x, leastwise), the
software assumes that you want to automatically renumber the map IDs for all
topics each time you compile the help file. This would be a great choice if
the software never changed and if we never reordered topics in the help
file. Guess what? <g>

In any event, the way to cure this problem (as I discovered yesterday) is to
work within the RoboHelp application itself (rather than in the Word file).
Under the Topics directory at the left of the window, expand the directory
until you see the Word file that is being used to generate the help file--it
will be at the bottom of the directory tree. Right-click on the file name to
edit its properties. Deselect the option that says "automatically renumber
map IDs" (something like that... it'll be obvious when you see it). From now
on, any map IDs you assign will stick rather than being renumbered each time
you compile.

--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
(try ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca if you get no response)
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada 

"It's one thing to see death coming at the hands of your own creation.
That's part of the human epic tradition, after all. Oedipus and his father.
Baron Frankenstein and his monster. William Henry Gates and Windows
'09."--David Brin, _Kiln People_

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