Trouble producing a PDF from originally-a-Web project

[SDWriterClmt]

Using Flare 2018.

Hello all. I recently inherited a web help project with thousands of files and has passed hands many times. Despite all the old stuff, artifacts, undefined conditionals, etc and so on, the HTML5 output will build and publish fine. But I was tasked this morning with a rush job of producing a PDF of this site for a client. (Customer's always right, I guess.) I am having a great deal of difficulty. The PDF version won't build. Lots of errors, undefined condition tags and bookmarks, bad links and so forth. So I assume that the PDF builder is less forgiving than the Web builder; I'm using the same topics and TOC as the web.

Maybe this is a silly question, but is there some kind of brute force way to get a PDF to generate? Can I tell flare to ignore all the broken links and undefined content, etc?

[SDWriterClmt]

I should add, the doc need not look super polished and pretty. And if there is gibberish where broken links exist, that would be acceptable.

[NorthEast]

The build log will show warnings and errors - only errors will prevent the PDF being built, so focus on those first.

I'd only expect the problems you mentioned to be warnings, and not prevent the build - i.e. undefined conditions, missing bookmarks, broken links.

[SDWriterClmt]

Yes, I've looked at the log. Lots of warnings and of course some errors. I don't have that project open at the moment and I don't recall how many. I figured it'd allow the warnings. I was hoping there might be some option to have it also ignore the errors (bad links and so forth) but I suppose that's not possible, which is why they're being called Errors.

Thanks for the reply. I will see if I can't post the log here later. For posterity if nothing else.

[devjoe]

A PDF output uses the topics linked from a TOC file in your project, and strings them together one after another to build the document. Links within those topics to topics which are missing or not included in the PDF create broken links in the PDF, but will not stop the build. So one thing you can do is use Analyzer and focus on broken links from your TOC file(s). You might, for the purpose of expediency, flag all such TOC entries with a condition and exclude that condition from the PDF, and the PDF build will skip them. (You will want to revisit them, since they represent problems with your web output also - maybe the content is missing or in a different place, or maybe they link to content that has been deleted and you need to delete the TOC entries also.)

You should also be aware that if you rename or delete topics from within Flare then it will offer to update/remove links to that content when you do so, and you should generally let it do so. However, if the files are renamed/deleted outside of Flare, then it doesn't know and you get broken links.

[SDWriterClmt]

Thanks again. I will look at the Analysis. FWIW, I just tried to build again, just to produce a 'fresh' error record.

Here are the messages generated; with irrelevant company data redacted (...) The Error is at the bottom. Spoiler alert -- Error is
"Build failed: Object reference not set to an instance of an object." Pretty common and general?

Code: Select all

Compiling target CT_OnlineHelp_pdf...
Removing previously generated content...
Gathering Glossary information...
Gathering Auto-index information...
Loading Master TOC... 
Processing Master TOC...
Processing Page Layouts...
Collecting source files...
Processing source files... 
Processing topic: ... 
Processing CSS: Resources\Stylesheets\CT2015.css... 
Missing linked source file: C:\Users\...\BestPracitice_60x60.png
Processing topic: ...
Processing topic: ...
Processing CSS: Resources\TableStyles\PatternedRows.css... 
YouTube/Vimeo not supported in this output. Replaced with static images.
YouTube/Vimeo not supported in this output. Replaced with static images.
Processing topic: Release Notes Archive.htm
Missing snippet file: /Resources/Snippets/DurationPoV.flsnp
Processing CSS: Resources\TableStyles\Rows.css...
Processing CSS: Resources\TableStyles\ShadedRows.css...
Missing linked source file: ...
Link points outside project file:///C:/...
Link points outside project file:///C:/...
Missing linked source file: ... 
Link points outside project file:///C:/...
...
...
...
Link points outside project file:///C:/... 
Processing topic: ...
...
...
...
Related Topic control found in file: ... It will be removed from the output.
Processing topic: Configuring the Database Server.htm
...
...
...
Topic was included in the Flare TOC more than once. The content will still be exported to the output more than once. 
Processing topic: Opening the Applications.htm 
Topic was included in the Flare TOC more than once. The content will still be exported to the output more than once. 
Processing topic: Welcome Screen.htm 
Processing topic: ...
...
...
...
Related Topic control found in file: "Content/Maintenance/Users.htm". It will be removed from the output.
Processing topic: ... 
...
...
...
Related Topic control found in file: ... It will be removed from the output.
Processing topic: Add a User.htm
...
Build failed: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Saving log to "C:\...\OnlineHelp_pdf.mclog"
 

[SDWriterClmt]

Hmm. Odd. A coworker tried this on her machine and her install of Flare. Same project file. Her's built with no errors. it took about 3-4 hrs and produced a 2200-pg PDF doc, but it worked. Not sure exactly which version of Flare she has.

AFAIK, the only thing she did different was not create a new pdf-specific target (which is what I did). She just modified the existing primary target, switching output from HTML5 to PDF. Go figure.

[ChoccieMuffin]

Hmm. Odd. A coworker tried this on her machine and her install of Flare. Same project file. Her's built with no errors. it took about 3-4 hrs and produced a 2200-pg PDF doc, but it worked. Not sure exactly which version of Flare she has.

AFAIK, the only thing she did different was not create a new pdf-specific target (which is what I did). She just modified the existing primary target, switching output from HTML5 to PDF. Go figure.

If you look at your target and hers side by side (or in Beyond Compare or similar) you might be able to identify what the differences are, and a process of trial and error might identify the problem.