Error 129

Question

Today I installed Robohelp 7 onto a test machine and
converted our Word help file. Everything LOOKS like it should be
going fine and dandy.
Obviously that isn't the case, or I wouldn't be posting here.
We generate two help files - a WinHelp 2000 and HTML Help.
The HTML help works wonderfully - no issues, headaches, etc.
However, the WinHelp 2000 file claims that a number of "Topics do
not exist. Contact your application vendor for an updated file."
Yet, the file is there, the HTML help works fine - why is WinHelp
2000 bein a pain in my bootie?
Winhelp 4 works fine as well - I thought of possibly tossing
that to the developers and seeing if they could make use of that.
But if my Spidie-senses are correct, that isn't going to fly. I've
read Robohelp's less-than-inspiring help file on error 129, and it
gives 3 possible reasons for the error. The first two aren't a
problem, and I can't determine if #3 is or not as the steps they
give below that for a work-around don't make sense to me. (..what
Contents tab? See below)
quote:
To workaround this WinHelp viewer limitation, you can either
manually insert the Help filename statement on every page of the
external CNT file or allow RoboHelp to automatically do it for you:
1 Open the Help file containing the included external CNT
file.
2 From RoboHelp Explorer’s File menu, select Project
Settings.
3 Select the Contents tab.
4 Select the Include Help filename with pages option. When
you save the TOC file, this option automatically places the
"@helpfilename.hlp" inside the CNT file on every page.
5 Click OK.
6 Save the external CNT file.
7 Recompile the Help project.
Ok, that was my really long winded problem. Any help would be
greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hi,
I have this exact same problem as I try to compile a WinHelp
4 out of Word documents. It's a little different that the word
Documents are all in Chinese, but the problem remains whether I
switch out English docs.
Recompilations do seem to allow random files to be
(un)available as you've already figured out, and the RH7 help is
not very helpful.
I've been making quite a bit of progress now. From the main
application, I would open the TOC tab, next to the Project tab at
the bottom. I would then navigate to the problem topic. Open the
topic which opens Word, next I open the footnote section which
specifies the Topic ID (I'm not sure if this is how your authoring
works). Then with the footnote section open, save the Doc, then
compile.
Now for some reason, I don't remember how I figured this out,
but I have to repeat this step once more. Then I no longer get that
error when trying to navigate to the topic from the compiled help.
I have no idea why twice, but it's been working exactly like that
so far.