Hi Chris,
Help & Manual is normally very responsive. However, there are some correctable factors that can slow it down under certain circumstances. I include my text covering all the bases below, but in your case the culprit will almost certainly be network references to unavailable destinations in your project that Windows is being agonizingly slow at trying to resolve. Unfortunately, Windows is terrible at handling this situation and often seems to be doing nothing for extended periods of time while trying to figure out whether the location is there or not.
By the way: If you need to work on your projects out of office frequently, setting up a free SubVersion server is by far the best solution. Then you no longer need to copy anything back and forth, and you also no longer need to work on slower network drives at all. Instead, you always work on a local working copy of the project that is linked to the master copy on the server. You only need to contact the server before work to get any pending changes made by others, and after work to update the master with your own changes. See here for details:
https://www.helpandmanual.com/help/inde ... ed_vcs.htmPossible reasons for slow performance in Help+Manual:* Orphaned network references to your project referencing locations on the network that no longer exist.
* Network performance if you are storing large projects on a network drive/share and working there
* Use of a large number of embedded images in your project.
* Integration of your project in a Subversion repository incorrectly using network locations for the working copies of your project.
First, please check that you are using the current version of Help & Manual. The current version of Help & Manual 7 is 7.3.5 Build 4434. Check your version with Help > About Help & Manual. If you need to update you can download the current installer here (just install on top of your current version to update):
https://www.helpandmanual.com/downloads.html?upd1) Orphaned network references
Slow loading and saving performance is often caused by orphaned network references in your project to locations on the network that no longer exist, and it may be made worse by embedded images in your project, which can also slow down editing.
Windows networks take a very long time to resolve invalid network references. In your project go to the following locations and delete any references to network locations that are no longer valid:
* Project Explorer > Configuration > Common Properties > Project Search Path
* Project Explorer > Configuration > Common Properties > Help Windows: HTML Help Options
* File > Recent projects (delete any projects shown in red that no longer exist)
2) Network performance
If you are storing your projects on a network drive or share it is possible that the network itself may be the bottleneck. To test this, try making a copy of your project on your local machine and edit it there for a while to see if you get better performance. Use Save As... in the Help & Manual File menu to save the copy, and save it in a folder in your own Documents directory on your local computer. Using the Documents directory ensures that you won't have Windows account permissions problems, because you always have full read and write permissions there.
3) Embedded images
When you copy and paste images from another program like Word they are initially embedded in your project. If you have more than just a couple of these images they can inflate the size of your project and will eventually slow down editing because embedded images use up very large amounts of memory and computer resources (many times their own uncompressed size). You need to convert embedded images to external files:
1. Click on an image in the Help & Manual editor. If it turns "negative" when you select it, it is OK. If it does not, it is embedded.
2. Right-click on the embedded image and select the option to convert it to an external file.
3. Repeat this for all embedded images in your project.
You can also locate embedded images with the Project Report tool in the Project tab. Run a full report with image references and search for the word "embedded" in the report. That will show you which topics contain embedded images.
4) Incorrect configuration of Subversion version control integration
Subversion version control works very differently from normal multi-user editing. In normal multi-user, everyone works on the same copy of the project on a network drive accessed by all users. You cannot and should not use this paradigm with Subversion, and if you do you will get a truly massive slowdown in performance, making editing pretty much impossible. You will also get a serious degradation of performance if each user tries to put their Subversion working copy of the project on a network drive instead of locally.
When working with Subversion, every user must work on their own local, linked copy of the project. This copy must be stored on a local drive on the computer they are working on, NOT on a network drive. This is crucial for Subversion to work properly. Otherwise you have geometrically expanding loopback references through the network, slowing editing to a crawl.
You can find full instructions for setting up Subversion correctly in this chapter in the HM help:
More Advanced Procedures > Using Version Control Systems