Deleted topics showing up as missing (with red X) in RH Explorer

Question

We have several topics in our RSC-controlled project that
were deleted but refuse to disappear. Possibly the topics were
deleted before RH crashed for some other reason. Now the topics are
still listed in RoboHelp Explorer, with a red "X" on the icon
showing that they are missing.
If I try to delete the file from the project, I get the usual
message. I confirm the deletion, but the topic doesn't disappear.
We've tried all sorts of things, such as deleting the CPD
file, deleting the file name from the HHP file, and so on. I
searched the project folder for any file that might still contain
the file name of the deleted topic, but there was nothing there.
(At least, there was nothing that Windows Explorer's search
function could find.)
New team members who get the project "fresh" from RSC also
see these deleted topics.
Does anyone have an idea how to get rid of these? They don't
really cause any problem, as far as we know, but they're annoying.
Thank you
/Eileen

Answer 1

The problem was that the topics were NOT in RSC, but RH still
considered them part of the project (though we didn't want them
anymore).
I finally got rid of those topics. Here's how:
1) In Windows Explorer, in the same folder as the "missing"
topic, make a copy of a random topic and change the file name to
match the missing one.
2) Go to RSC and add the "missing" topic.
3) Using RoboHelp, open the project and delete the topic.
Hope this works for anybody else having this problem.
My guess is that this error occurred when a RH user deleted
those topics and then RH crashed. So the topics were (correctly)
deleted from RSC, but the file(s) that keep track of which topics
are included in the project was/were not saved. Then RH wouldn't
let us delete the topics from the project because the topics were
"missing" from RSC. Doh! (That seems like dumb behavior. Why is it
NOT ok that the topics are missing from RSC, if I want to delete
them from the project anyway? Oh well.)
/Eileen