Dead links in PDF...

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Laini Giles
Posts: 32
Joined: Wed Apr 03, 2019 7:27 pm

Dead links in PDF...

Unread post by Laini Giles »

Hello--

I'm doing a giant survey of our document (we generate in WebHelp and PDF), looking for formatting issues and ways to improve.

I don't remember this happening previously (it could have been and we didn't notice). We have several heading topics that have links to multiple topics within that unit. For some reason, these links are working in the WebHelp, but not the PDF.

I've checked, and these topics are included in the build, and I've also examined the code, and can see no differences between these and the others. Can anyone help?

Thx,
Laini
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Tim Green
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Re: Dead links in PDF...

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Laini,

If the links are working in WebHelp and not in PDF and the topics are included in both builds the most likely cause is that the topics don't have TOC entries. In WebHelp every topic is a separate document and they can all be displayed with hyperlinks, even if they are not in the TOC. A PDF is a single document, so you can't have content that is not in the TOC. If topics don't have TOC entries, they won't be included in PDF or Word DOCX, which is also a single-document format.

What you can do here is add TOC entries for the topics that are only included in PDF. Use the option for adding a topic, but enter the topic ID of the existing topic instead of creating a new one. Then include the TOC entry in the PDF build only. After that, go to the topic file in Project Files > Topic Files and include it in both PDF and WebHelp.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Laini Giles
Posts: 32
Joined: Wed Apr 03, 2019 7:27 pm

Re: Dead links in PDF...

Unread post by Laini Giles »

Thank you, Tim!

Some of the items had TOC entries. Our problem was that the writers should have referred to the topics directly under the heading topic (which ARE in the TOC), and that wasn't done in all cases. So that was why some had links and some didn't.

I learn something new every day with this product!
L.
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