Index wizard. Is it worth it?

Hello,
RH 8x generating a CHM
I am about to manually index my moderately large help system. Sadly, I find the exercise completely mind-numbing and I'm looking for a way out.
I am loathe to use the Index wizard because in the past I believe there was no going back once you had run the wizard. That is, index entries generated through the wizard stayed unless they were manually deleted. I'm also unsure what the results will be.
So, can anyone sell me on the benefits of the wizard these days? In brief, how does it work? I understand excluding words, but how does Senor Wizard work otherwise?
Thanks very much.

Whoa there! You are looking for an "easy way out" with indexing? With indexing there is rarely a grey area. You either have a good index or a bad one and believe you me it is well worth the time and effort of having a good one. I know indexes are not used as much as they once were but they are still widely used. As for the Index Wizard use it if you:
Want a really bad index.
Spend time correcting what the wizard finds.
My personal opinion is that manual indexing is the only way to go. Yes it takes time and yes it can be mind numbingly boring (although personally I don't find it so) but it is worth it in the end. People write books on how to index so the easy way is rarely the best way. We always factor in time for indexing into any help project.
Read the RoboColum(n) for a tips, tricks and musings on the Technical Communication Suite products.
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Similar Messages

Run Smart Index Wizard more than once?

Afternoon all,
RH8 generating WebHelp.
Quick question on how the Smart Index Wizard works. I've run it once, made no changes to any topic, ran it again and got many more entries added to the Index.
So, should one run the Smart Index Wizard multiple times? Until it says no more entries found?
Is it adding entries the second time based on the existing Index entries it's already created?
Thanks for any light you can shed...
Patrick

Colum,
Thanks for the reply. I'm rapidly coming to the same conclusion about the Smart Index Wizard. It looks like, if "Find New And Existing Index Keywords" is selected, the wizard will add keywords based on topic content AND existing index entries. This would explain why the wizard finds new words each time it's run.
My multiple runs of the wizard on my small project resulted in 6448 entries added the first time, 4191 the second, 154 the thrid and 69 entries added the fourth. Seems like it picks up nearly every word and phrase outside of the ignore list.
A lot of what the wizard puts out is clearly useless. The wizard is also not as useful as it could be since it filters on topic Status and not CBT. Howver, I've saved off the .hhk file as I do like to peruse it for words I've missed and suggested phrases. It's also good to give you a veiw of just how many places a word or phrase is being used - helps me to see how common it is and whehter I want to include it or not.
Patrick

RoboHelp - Smart Index Wizard

We are trying to use the Smart Index wizard to creage a
Keyword for a Topic (K-Keyword for a topic). Some of our keywords
are 4 digit numerics. (example - 0103) The wizard is not
recognizing them. The wizard will recognize 5K13. Does anyone know
of a patch or a setting that we can apply?
Thanks
Sally A. Dockery

Hi
The Gunslinger asked:
What is Adobe's bug reporting procedure?
To which I reply:
Click
here and complete the form you should find.
Cheers... Rick

Smart index wizard is not displayed

hi!
I am struggling a serious problem while developing Robohelp
office x3.
Smart index wizard is not displayed anywhere.
No~~, Nothing related to Smart indext wizard is not displayed
on program.
Did I get wrong installation?
Somebody help me.

Hello dsfda and welcome to our community
Are you using RoboHelp for Word or RoboHelp HTTML? Assuming
RoboHelp HTML, have you tried looking at the Tools menu?
If you are using RoboHelp for Word, I'll have to defer to
someone that actually uses that product to answer.
Cheers... Rick

Oracle Index Wizard

Can you please answer any of these questions.
1) How to use Oracle Index wizard in oracle 10g and how to go to that wizard.
2) What is the url to access oracle 10g enterprise manager console.
3) Do we need to install any other softwares to access Oracle 10g index wizard.

In Oracle 9i, try this link: http://www.lc.leidenuniv.nl/awcourse/oracle/em.920/a86647/indxtun.htm#1003379
To access the OEM Database Console try to access the link http://server_ip_or_name:5505/em/console
In Oracle 10g try this:
Using Segment Advisor
You can use Segment Advisor to provide advice on whether an object is a good candidate for a shrink operation based on the level of space fragmentation within an object. The advisor also reports on the historical growth trend of segments. You can use this information for capacity planning and for arriving at an informed decision about which segments to shrink. Use the Segment Advisor wizard to evaluate objects for block and space usage and to determine whether space can be saved by shrinking highly fragmented segments. The space gained by the implementation of these recommendations is returned to the tablespace. You can launch the Segment Advisor from the Advisor Central page or you can initiate it in the context of a schema object, such as an index, table, tablespace, or materialized view.
To run Segment Adviso, follow these steps:
1. Navigate to the Database Home page.
2. In the Related Links section, click on Advisor Central. The Advisor Central page appears displaying a list of all Advisors available to you and a table showing the results of Advisor tasks that have previously been initiated.
3. Select Segment Advisor from the list of Advisors.
Using the SQL Access Advisor
The SQL Access Advisor helps define appropriate access structures such as indexes and materialized views to optimize SQL queries.
cheers

RH7 - Spell Checker and Smart Index Wizard looking in all folders?

Hi all,
RE: RH7 - Spell Checker and the Smart Index Wizard looking in all folders instead of just TOC topics?
While running the Spell Checker and the Smart Index Wizard I am getting the impression they are looking in *all* the folders under the Project Files folder, and not just the topics I have chosen to insert into my TOC. Is this true? If so, is it possible to set RH so that it only looks in TOC topics?
TIA
- avraham

Hi Peter -
Thanks for your reply. Yes, the pop-up topics are in the same
folders as the other topics and I am choosing "Any Status" (right
now all of the topics in the project are the same status anyway).
What's even stranger is that after I posted my original
message, I found that it picked up about five of my 100 or so
pop-up topics, yet ignored the rest. I cannot find ANYTHING about
these included topics that differs from the ignored topics.
Bizarre.
Since I need to move forward ASAP, I am now going through
each pop-up topic individually and using the Smart Index option on
the Topic Properties Index tab. It works just fine; is just
time-consuming, but actually may end up saving me time on the Index
in the long-run, since I can define which keywords Robo adds to
each topic on the front-end (not have to prune out worthless
entries later).
My guess is that this issue may have to do with the
conversion of the files from RH 5 to RH 6. It shouldn't - all of
the pop-up topics were added after I converted to RH 6, but I've
noticed odd things can happen when you bring a project into a newer
version of the program.
Thanks again, Peter.
I don't have an answer but I have a workaround that
I can live with!

Can anyone tell me what the Wizard is doing when I run the Index Wizard?

I am running RH8, Windows 7 and generating WebHelp.
The Wizard seems to be picking up the names of topics and making them keywords. Some of my topic names have no spaces in them and that’s the way they come into the Index. So, I assume I have to name all of my topics so that they come into the index correctly. Is that right?
I also seem to be getting HTML terms in my index. Some of it looks like formatting. What is happening there?
When the index is created by the wizard and I look at the Index pod I see the index keywords on the top of the pod. Some of the topics are in bold and some are not. The ones in bold do not have an entry in the bottom of the pod in the Topics for: area. These do not display when the help is generated. The unbolded items have an entry in the bottom of the pod in the Topics for: area. These items display when the project is generated. So, what’s happening here? Why are some topics bold and others not?
If you can point me to some Index info I’d be grateful. Yes, I wish I could take a class but that’s not likely to happen in this economy.
But this forum has the best people. I’d be dead without it.
Thanks.
Pat

Well, we can't as we don't know what you consider as "more than enough". The built is quite heavy (like it can be 800mb) then it needs to be extracted to be installed before everything unneeded gets deleted...

Index does not work correctly in Firefox

I use WebHelp in Robohelp and had created my Index with the
index wizard. I recently had complaints about wrong topics opening
when using the index. This does not happen with content. I have not
looked closer at search to see if it is happening here.
When I went back to troubleshoot, I discovered that all the
links were correct. Further investigation showed that the problem
was only happening in Firefox not in IE. The problem also did not
occur all the time. I then realized that it was isolated to topics
within books or secondary level topics. The first time that you
click on a link that is a sublevel in your TOC it would go to the
main topic (book level). The breadcrumb only shows that level. But
the next time you would click on a link it would go one level
further (topic page level). So, if you clicked on the link twice,
the first time it would go to the level above and the second time
it would go to the correct level. (First click breadcrumb AA>BB
and the second click AA>BB>CC. The first click should take it
to the second example, not the first.) This only happens in Firfox.
I am viewing it in Firefox 3.0.1. Is there a work around for this?
I do not know how to correct it. The only solution I have is to
eliminate the index altogether which would not be fun since I also
have a custom created skin that includes the index that would need
to be redesigned.

Welcome to the forum.
When you say delete the index, I think you mean delete the
TOC?
This is a known problem with Firefox. You have books with
links to topics. If you remove those and have the required topic
immediately below the book, the problem will go away.
See other posts and my site.
Please post a bug report as Adobe need to fix this.
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

K Keywords not showing up in compiled help index

I have created a help project with one document. Each topic
has been checked to add it to the index. Saved and compiled the
help. Some words appear on the index, while others do not. I go
into the index designer, and I can see all the missing words.
Ran the Index Wizard, and still the words do not appear. You
can see the topics in the toc, and navigate to them.
I have years producing help and never encountered this
problem.

Go to Tools and delete cache for the folder in question.

Trouble with CHM Search & Index after Importing Word Document

Greetings,
I have recently inherited all things RoboHelp at work, but the last person to work with our projects left 6 months ago. I received a brief overview of how our CHM files were generated from the same word document in RH HTML 7.
Currently, I am using RoboHelp HTML 9, but am having trouble with the Index and Search functionality from an imported Word 2003 (.doc) file. During my import, only a single topic is created and named after the source document. I believe this may be the root of my problems, but haven't had much luck with a solution.
I have stumbled my way through setting after setting, but feel I am missing something obvious. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Ken
Background:
Our source documents have a working TOC and Heading 1-3 structure. When creating a new project and importing the document, the TOC is imported correctly. The TOC navigations links seem to function correctly.
I have used the Smart Index Wizard to find new keywords from topic titles and topic text. Unfortunately it seems the import only creates a single topic named after the source word document and therefore associates all keywords with the single topic. when trying to navigate the index after the CHM is generated, all links simply reference the beginning of the document.
When using the search feature in the CHM, only a single result is returned for any search words. This result is always the single topic as described above. The results link always returns you to the start of the document but does highlight the keyword throughout the document.

When you import there is an Advanced button in one of the dialogs. Click that and you will be able to Paginate against chosen styles. That will break your document into topics.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

Search and index for child projects

Hello I have a merged RoboHelp 9 project. Is there a way I can setup the project so that when the user does a search, the child projects are searched as well as the master? Is there a way that I can used the Smart Index Wizard from the master project to produce an index which includes the child projects as well as the master. Thank you for any help you can provide.

Welcome to our community, Steven
Sorry for slowness, forums seem hit or miss today.
What you are describing is exactly how a merge should operate. All projects that are part of the merge should be properly searched and an Index would work across all projects. Because of this, I'm struggling to see a need to index everything from only the Master.
As you likely already know, the Smart Index Wizard simply scans topics and auto-maps them to keywords in whatever project you have open.
Sorry, but there is no way I'm aware of for the Smart Index Wizard to be used from the Master and coax it to index child projects. It's an interesting thing to consider and I would heartily encourage you to submit a Wish Form to ask for this functionality to appear in a future release. You do this using the Wish Form. (link to the Wish Form is in my sig)
Cheers... Rick
Helpful and Handy Links
RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form
Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7, 8 or 9 within the day!
Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training
SorcerStone Blog
RoboHelp eBooks

IE crash following intensive index use

I created a small WebHelp project (95 topics) using RH 5.x.
When I launch the project in IE (6.0.x) and try to use the compiled
index, I find that clicking quickly on 6-7 entries in a row causes
the browser to shut down. I can click all day, slow or fast, in the
same index using Netscape or Firefox, without incident. Any
thoughts on a possible cause? This sounds like the same problem
that Bin.Chen reported on 9/27/06. That post generated no
follow-ups so thought I'd risk a repeat.

I just made a copy of a 271-topic project heavy on tables,
with file names like acppd_format_ name_keys and in-topic
references to these files, so they show up as text as well as file
names. The Index Wizard picked up about 8,000 keywords.
I did the index with a project setting for "Add keywords to"
HHK and generated WebHelp.
Then I discarded the HHK file and set "Add keywords to"
Topics, created an index and generated WebHelp to a separate
directory.
The WebHelp output packages were substantially the same. The
wizard picked up a few more keywords in the second pass, but this
affected only a few output files. Their structure was the same,
most counterpart files were the same, and the whxxx directories
were only slightly larger the second time. They totaled just under
4 MB. Are your whxxx directories a lot bigger?
I put both versions up on a Dev sever and tried to make IE
crash with rapid clicks in the Index. No crash.
Overall, the second WebHelp package was only a little bigger,
at about 6.25 MB.
The only important difference was in the project folder. As I
specified, Index terms were in the HHK file, or they were stored as
Metadata in the source code (and only in the source files, not the
output files).
So I'm grasping at straws now.
How big are your whxxx directories?
Do you have any file names or index terms with strange
characters, aside from - hyphen and _ underscore? Spaces, of
course, are OK in the index but not in file names. How many layers
deep are your topics? An unusually long link path, including a
really long file name, can cause trouble elsewhere. I don't know
whether these issues are relevant to index loading.
One more thought.
Try to find a Web site built with RH, with a substantial
Index. See if the browser quits there. If not, I'd look more
closely at your server.
Regards,
Harvey

RoboHelp 8 crashes when I click the index

This was happening in one particular project. I spent two hours on the phone with Adobe Support, but they couldn't figure it out. We assumed the index got corrupted somehow, so I recreated the project and created a brand new index. It worked fine yesterday, but when I opened the project this morning and clicked the index, RoboHelp crashed again. I tried it multiple times and RoboHelp crashes each time. I tried it on both of my systems, Windows Vista and Windows XP. Can anyone help me please?

I'm using RH 8.0.2.208
I have a similiar problem......RH completely freezes when I attempt to create an idex which causes me to ctrl-alt-delete in order to close RH.
Here's what I've tried, using the Smart Index Wizard:
--create an index by manually confirming each new keyword (my preferred method)
--create an index by automatically accepting each new keyword
--create an index on ONLY one folder (thinking if I can just get ONE indexed, I'm in good shape)
--deleting the CPD file, and create the index again (the 3 ways above)
In the Index Pod:
--manually added one index keyword (to an empty index, obviously) and saved it. No problem there.
Each time I attempt to create an index, I can see the keywords being added to the Index pod in the background but then it just freezes some time during the process and nothing is saved. When I tried to create an index by adding new index keywords automatically, it looks like it went all the way to the end...and froze just as it was finishing (the index completion status green bar was at the very end).
A year ago, I was able to create a new index on a different project. Since then, with every new project created, the index has failed and crashed RH. Size hasn't mattered, the large projects and the super small ones fail.
The alternative is to send the documentation without an index, but this is really not acceptable.
Is there anything else I can try?

Indexing - Flashhelp

When I run the Smart Index Wizard I get index keywords that
are hidding behind expanded text. Can I get RoboHelp not to take
words that are part of the expanded text?
Thanks

The smart index wizard doesn't differentiate between text in
the main topic area or elsewhere. The best bet is to manuall index
the topic.

Confusion with Indexing

Hello,
I have recently taken over building/maintaining the online
resource my company uses. There has been a push to have "more"
avaialble via the index, however when I attempt to provide this I
run into problems.
For this to make sense a quick back ground.
We have many diffrent topics, and each topic has many
diffrent book marks. These book marks are or course relevant and
save time. The alternative being a time consuming scrolling through
the whole topic.
I understand how to link my index to these spcific bookmarks,
however I was hoping for something a little more intuative.
I have also tried using the Index Wizard, but those keywords
linked to the topic as a whole and not the individual bookmark.
Recently I have discovered that while in the Index area if
you right click on a bookmark you want to add and then select
"properties", there is an option to add your own key words.
However again this key words link to the document has a whole
and not the bookmark I have clicked on.
Is there a way to have a bookmark connected to more then one
keyword, without having to enter it in manually many times?
I hope there is.
Cheers

Hi Leon,
It is HTML - I didn't explain myself well.
When you manually create an index you can have parent entries
in the index, and associate child index entries with those parents.
Essentially you can create a two level index.
Parent A
...Child 1
...Child2
Parent B
...Child3
...Child4
When you've compiled the file and use the index you'd
normally type in a term you want to locate in the index - for
example 'Fixture'.
The search in the index will locate 'Fixture' if it is at
parent level, but will not locate it if it is a child entry.
You can still associate topics with both parent and child
entries, and you will be taken to them when you click on the index
entry.
To give you an example, suppose i set up an Index structure
like:
Fixture
...Adding
...Editing
...Deleting
Gondola
...Adding
...Editing
...Deleting
I would be able to find Fixture or Gondola by typing in the
term at the top of the Index tab in the compiled file. However,
typing in Adding would not give a match.
I had hoped to set up a visually neat manual index that would
griup terms logically, like an index in a book, but apparently you
can't do this in RH.
If you have to do it all on one level 'Adding Fixture' comes
at a very different point in the Index to 'Editing Fixture'.

Index wizard. Is it worth it?

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