MadCap Software Forums

I have also seen this, but I've not tried to "fix" it, and I cannot guess what it might be for. So far it hasn't broken anything, but I think an explanation as to why it has been done would be nice.

All the Madcap generated IDs are unique, and all the alias links created are to existing topics, so ...

Maybe you could even avoid the same idea being requested twice or more..

Actually, I think the idea is that they are more likely to consider ideas that get a lot of requests!
I reckon if you have an idea you should publish it in the forums and then others may be prompted to make a request as well.

Anybody discover any tricks for this in the last 6 months?

I think there are still a few problems. You need to invest some time in understanding styles, especially the print and screen medium.

Word import puts all topics in the one folder, and generates file names, which means than any round ...

This is a known bug - the current workarounds are:


Copy and paste anyway and fix the formatting in the Flare topic (for small amounts of text).
Save the Word document as HTML and copy/paste the html code.
Import the Word document - most styles can be made to get through the import process. You ...

Clearly, we're all different ...

One of the reasons I (with my team) chose Flare is because it was EASY to use. From the first day of our trial we were up and running and generating output, and we would not go back to the other tool. The beginner's tutorial was useful, and I've learnt lots from the ...

Hang on - can we question Madcap's response? There's a known issue with INDEX anchors and CHMs, but I thought we were looking at just hyperlinks and bookmarks!

Hmm - not sure if I can help much more. I'd look at the html code to see if there is any difference in the working ex-RH links and the new ones.

FYI - I have links into tables working in both CHMs and webhelp.

I've managed to link into the middle of tables OK. How are you setting up the hyperlinks? In the Insert hyperlink dialog you select the topic first, then click the Bookmark button to specify a specific spot in the selected topic.

I think Word has a timing problem - if you scroll through a generated document with several pictures, the picture does not always display immediately.

Slow answer, if you do a print preview and look at every page, then break the links, it will work - not practical for big documents.

Alternative ...

I can't spot a reason for the problem straight off, but this is what I would do to trouble-shoot:

0. First, make a backup.

1. Now, clean your output - a lot of temp files are created during the CHM compile , and old aliases may be getting in the way.

2. Open the .FLALI and .H files with a text ...

You can do this manually, but make sure you backup etc.

In Flare, open up your alias file using the Internal Text Editor (right-click on the alias to get this).
Then search for the ID that is causing the error, and delete the whole line - from <Map Name=xxx ... />

When items get removed from the ...

Here's a summary:

Language for spell checking topics:
You can select the default language in the wizard when you create a new project .
To change the default language for the project, use Project > Project Properties ...
You can set a language just for an individual topic using the Topic ...

You can set a default language for the project using the menu option Project > Project Properties... and selecting the Language tab.

OK - I have tried all these suggestions and still no luck. SQL Express was definitely running as mentioned in the previous post. I have tried to open several projects - all can be open and updated with Flare on this machine in this configuration, and yes, we did try the old reboot, and we tried it ...

In Analyzer do any of the reports run? or can you view them?

I can click on the accordian tabs, if that is what you mean, but there is no data as no project is loaded.

I have just installed analyzer on a test machine so that I can try it out. I installed Flare as well and it runs OK. Our systems people had already installed SQL Express, .NET and so on.

I can start Analyzer and open the help file!

When I try and open a project, the dialog box opens, I select a ...

Yes, I meant the Content Explorer.

My Word problems look to be the same as your Frame ones. At the moment, I am only using the import/re-import feature during the review phase, and so I haven't customised any properties. I find I can happily delete. I have reported the crashing problem, but don't ...

I haven't found a "select all" button yet. What I do when re-importing Word files is just delete the existing ones from the import folder. With the file list I can do them all at once, though I don't have 300+ to import. (PS - I had other problems re-importing Word - deleting all the files made it ...

I haven't fully tested Analyzer, but hope to soon - we had issues with SQL Express. We are a big company and have a large DB department who don't want the rest of us installing express (it has caused problems). We will probably get a separate test machine for trials, but are more likely to wait a ...

Round-trip Word imports, or there and back again ...

I have been experimenting with exporting AND importing Word documents from Flare. In the past, I have managed to successfully import from Word, and later on I've managed to create Word output from my Flare topics, but this is the first time I've ...

Sometimes we get bogged down in workarounds. I know we need them to get by, but surely only till a bug gets fixed.

As crdunn pointed out earlier (yes, we work at the same place), when you have \"display : none\" to transpose a style into printed output, Flare strips the carriage return/new line ...

I think we've had this \"philosophy\" discussion before.

We generate mostly online help, but need a few things sent to Word occasionally. We have \"navigation bars\" with hyperlinks at the top of topics in our online help that look fine online - and make no sense printed out.

Yes, we could put ...

Is there any way to tell Flare not to add \"ms-its\"?

Flare started adding this with v3.1 - there is a patch to stop this - see the thread at:
http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewtopic.php?t=4653

The ms-its bits were added to the images and the style sheet references.

The Word command:

Select the whole document (Ctrl-A)
Select Edit > Links ...
Choose Save pictures, and also Break links.

This looks like a bug - just tried it and I get the same results as you.

A slow workaround until it gets fixed might be to output to pages of the same size, then change the Word template to have different odd/even/first page margins. And then send to PDF. Not a perfect solution but it might work. I ...