Search doesn't include all content

[Steveman]

I seem to have the opposite problem to most other posters about Search. My compiled project doesn't find everything in my Content. Most people get too many results. I have imported all my other project manuals into one main WebHelp. I also copied into the Content a bunch of Word and PDF files that I have linked to a page in the Webhelp for users to download. Only problem is that Search doesn't include them in the search results.

Originally I had merged my outputs at run-time as a WebHelp Plus project and again the search worked fine. I added the Word docs into the AutoSearch folder and they came up in the search results. However, I wanted the filter to work and it doesn't on merged projects, so I went for importing everything into one mother-ship project. I also read that if you want stuff to come up in searches it needs to be in the Content folder, not necessarily the TOC. I figured brilliant, and copied the Word and PDF files directly into the Content.

But now they don't show up in Search results. I wonder if I'm better to create a WebHelp Plus target and add them again into the Autosearch folder? Or is there something else I need to do with the files in Content for them to be included? As I said, most posts on this issue have too many files and need to apply conditions to exclude. For some reason I don't have enough. I figured having each one hyperlinked to a single topic in the TOC that lists all of the downloadable docs would make them even more findable. If that's even a word.

[whunter]

If I am reading your post correctly, it sounds like you are trying to get the Word and PDF content to show up in a search in regular WebHelp? According to Flare help, it looks like the only way to search non-XHTML files is via WebHelp Plus as you were doing originally. See About Search in the Flare Help.

[Steveman]

I guess you might be right. May have to go with WebHelp Plus again. I think the search filter problem might be sorted because all the content is in one project now instead of merged as it was before. So I need to have all the non-xhtml in the Content if I want to link to it properly (I've tried linking outside but none of that works no matter what I try) This way all the links are inside one project. But to include them in a search I need to add them to Autosearch.

Oh well, we'll see if that works again. Many thanks.

[NorthEast]

I haven't used WebHelp Plus, but I'm pretty sure you can specify extra folders (in an XML file) which it will include in the search; if that's relevant to your question.

[Steveman]

Thanks Dave, yes you can set up an external search folder but not sure if it's available in WebHelp. I'll check that though. It seems that WebHelp works perfectly, it just doesn't have search capability on non-xhtml (unless the folder thing works), and WebHelp plus works okay for searching (although it takes all day to index and often in testing search doesn't work at all).

We'll get there.