TOC gets lost repeatedly

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Robert Echtler
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Joined: Thu Mar 16, 2017 11:22 am

TOC gets lost repeatedly

Unread post by Robert Echtler »

Situation: Two or more users edit the same project (hmxp). When saving the project, the following problem occurs -- not always, but very often (i.e. several times a day!):
After saving, the table of context has vanished, i.e. the file .\Maps\table_of_contents.xml is empty (header only).

At the moment, we copy the table_of_contents.xml file manually at a regular basis and overwrite the empty file with the former version whenever the problem occurs. That helps, but it is definitely not the way to work productively.

We don’t have any ideas what may cause this problem. It occurs even when we just edit the topic files (not the structure/the TOC).
Is this a known issue? Are there any solutions?

Thx for your support!
Robert
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Tim Green
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Re: TOC gets lost repeatedly

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Robert,

This is very strange, we've never yet encountered TOC problems like this. I have some important questions:
  • Are your users saving and refreshing the project before and after every TOC change and refreshing often? Since the TOC is editable by everyone this is critical.
  • When one user is working on a topic, is it displayed as read-only with a red bar above it for the other users? If it isn't, file locking isn't working correctly on the server share where you are working on the project.
  • Is everyone using the same version of Help+Manual and is it up to date (7.3.1 Build 4180)? If different users are on different versions you can experience serious errors.
  • Do you restart Windows every day? Recently we have seen increasing instances of strange Windows errors caused by Windows running out of internal resources when it is not restarted regularly.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Robert Echtler
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Mar 16, 2017 11:22 am

Re: TOC gets lost repeatedly

Unread post by Robert Echtler »

Hi Tim,

find my answers inlinie ...
Are your users saving and refreshing the project before and after every TOC change and refreshing often? Since the TOC is editable by everyone this is critical.
Yes they do. Sitting in the same room, they even inform one another to refresh the project immedeately after TOC changes.
Note: The error occurs independently from having changed the TOC. -- Just a few minutes ago, a collegue added a snippet file, saved the project and the TOC was gone :-(
When one user is working on a topic, is it displayed as read-only with a red bar above it for the other users? If it isn't, file locking isn't working correctly on the server share where you are working on the project.
File locking works as it should.
Is everyone using the same version of Help+Manual and is it up to date (7.3.1 Build 4180)? If different users are on different versions you can experience serious errors.
We are using the server version; to my knowledge it is installed only once.
Do you restart Windows every day? Recently we have seen increasing instances of strange Windows errors caused by Windows running out of internal resources when it is not restarted regularly.
I don't think so. -- But I know that the error occured after a restart, too. Anyway, I will ask our IT how often the server/VM with H&M is restarted.

I'll keep you informed.
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Tim Green
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Re: TOC gets lost repeatedly

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Robert,

Thanks a lot for the detailed information. I'll get back to you on this.
I don't think so. -- But I know that the error occured after a restart, too. Anyway, I will ask our IT how often the server/VM with H&M is restarted.
Restarting the server shouldn't be an issue, since all the work is performed by the Help+Manual running on the client machines.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
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