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Doc-to-Help Conversion Very Slow

Posted: Thu May 11, 2017 9:41 am
by amygil
I have a new problem with Doc-to-Help and I can't figure out what changed if anything to cause it. Maybe Word did a minor update but I'm not sure. My document conversions can take 1/2 hour or even an hour if it's a long document. These are documents that used to take 10 minutes at the most. The slow down seems to be right after "Converting lists to text DONE" appears on the Output tab. Has anyone else had this problem? Do you know of a fix?

I am using Doc-to-Help 4 and Word 2016. It's possible that some slowing down occurred after updating to Word 2016 from 2010, but it didn't seem like it was this bad until just recently.

Re: Doc-to-Help Conversion Very Slow

Posted: Fri May 12, 2017 2:33 am
by SKamprowski
Hi amygil,

I'm afraid that there is no such fix, except there is a not-mentioned fix in SR1398 which was published a few days after first release 1396.
If you suspect conversion of lists to take longer:
How did you implement lists in Word, means do you use C1H-bullet etc. or Word's own lists?

Re: Doc-to-Help Conversion Very Slow

Posted: Fri May 19, 2017 8:04 am
by amygil
I used Words own bullets. I could try changing to C1H and see what happens. What is the difference?

Though it seems the list conversion is done quickly and it's the step after that that is the slow one. I'll try it again to confirm and also try it using C1H bullets.

Re: Doc-to-Help Conversion Very Slow

Posted: Mon May 22, 2017 6:55 am
by SKamprowski
Hi,

what's the next step named?

Re: Doc-to-Help Conversion Very Slow

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2018 4:16 pm
by SteveLiley42
Hi,

I am using DocToHelp5 on Word 2013 (won't run on 2016). I have 23 documents in the project, which is inline Help for our suite of Apps. It's comprehensive, with a lot of Bullets. Minor changes and Build are Ok, performance wise, but major changes and a Rebuild take a long time. The delay point is "Converting lists to text...". Styles are C1H Bullet 1 through 4.

How can I improve this?

Cheers
Steve

Re: Doc-to-Help Conversion Very Slow

Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2018 1:36 am
by SKamprowski
Hi,

slow conversion may have a lot of different causes.
1. Wrong location of projects
Projects are expected to be located on local drives, not Network drives.
2. Issues with templated
Assign MadCaps Standard templates to your Targets. If that does not compile as slow as your own you know what to modify.
3. Garbage in your source documents, like unnecessary bookmarks, or "Extended" bookmarks.

Re: Doc-to-Help Conversion Very Slow

Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2018 11:24 pm
by SteveLiley42
Hi SKamprowski,

All of the files for my Project are on a single Windows 10 PC. The hardware is modern and fast; lots of RAM and striped SSD storage. A Rebuild is only slow at the "Converting lists to text..." point for each file, as I said in my earlier post. Since then, I have been going through the files and reducing the nesting of Bullets, wherever I can but that is laborious. In my opinion, the code doing the "list conversion" has issues.

Cheers

Re: Doc-to-Help Conversion Very Slow

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2018 3:27 pm
by SteveLiley42
Hi Sabine,

I received your PM, thanks. I haven't figured out how to PM back to you though.

It is entirely possible that the components of our D2H installation and Project files structure is at least partially at fault. How big that part is, I don't know. A bit of history; we started with Microsoft Help, 20 or so years ago. We migrated to RoboHelp then migrated again to D2H, probably version 1; I don't remember. Some of our early migrations/upgrades put images in the wrong places as well as the Project file. All of our imagery in Word is provided with "link to file", so moving the images to the right place is a big deal. We've upgraded, to new versions as they have become available, culminating in version 5, which is the best yet. The performance issue that I and others have described isn't a show-stopper for us but it does take time I'd rather not lose. I'm using Office 2013 because Madcap Support concluded that there is a "memory issue", when using Word 2016. We still get occasional "crashes" during Builds but a Rebuild always fixes them, so it's not worth the long delays in passing details to and from D2H Support, given the opposing time zones.

I'll rationalise the Project file locations and investigate the Templates again. Nothing is "standard" any more.

Cheers
Steve

Re: Doc-to-Help Conversion Very Slow

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2018 4:56 pm
by Nita Beck
Steve, you are still in the probationary stage, as a new forum member and given your post count of 3 (at the time of this writing), until you get over a threshold (I’m not sure what that is; MadCap sets it), after which you’ll be able to post without moderation and to send PMs.