Copying topic files NOT in TOC to another project

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Rainer Oehry
Posts: 102
Joined: Sun Dec 10, 2017 12:47 pm

Copying topic files NOT in TOC to another project

Unread post by Rainer Oehry »

I am aware that I can copy topics from one project to another by copypasting their TOC entries.

I have a lot of topic files that are only used as snippets and are not in any TOC. I would like to have them available in another project, but cannot just reuse them from within the originating project or from a repository, because I have to edit them slightly for this other project. So I would like to be able to copy the files to the other project.

Is there a way to do that? Or is there another way altogether?

Thank you.
Regards,

Rainer
Head of Technical Writing & Knowledge Management
TIG Technische Informationssysteme GmbH, Rankweil, Austria
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Tim Green
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Re: Copying topic files NOT in TOC to another project

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Rainer,

The easiest way to do this is if your projects are stored in the uncompressed HMXP format. Then you can just copy the topic XML files from the Topics folder of one project to another. Then they will show up in the other project in Topic Files, when you re-open that project.

IMPORTANT: Don't copy folders from one project to another in this way! Folders in Topic Files won't show up unless they are created within the project by Help+Manual.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Rainer Oehry
Posts: 102
Joined: Sun Dec 10, 2017 12:47 pm

Re: Copying topic files NOT in TOC to another project

Unread post by Rainer Oehry »

Hi Tim, thank you for your quick reply.

I had tried that before, but it didn't work—at least it seemed so. After copying the xml files, I had switched away from and back to the topics folder in the explorer, but the files didn't show up as available topics. When trying to create a new TOC entry by linking to an existing topic file, the copied files did show up for selection, but after saving the TOC entry, I got a "topic not found" error (don't remember the exact wording).

After your confirmation that this should in fact work that way, I tried again, this time closing and reopening the whole target project, and voilà—it worked as it should.

Could have tried that right away, before I bothered you with a question that seems avoidable in hindsight …

Anyway, thank you again.
Regards,

Rainer
Head of Technical Writing & Knowledge Management
TIG Technische Informationssysteme GmbH, Rankweil, Austria
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