Files with "Exclude" condition included in output

[rlane]

My Flare project consists of topics that are used for both PDF and WebHelp output. For WebHelp, only a subset of the topics are used. However, even thought I apply a print-only condition to topics that I don't want in WebHelp, and set that print-only condition to "Exclude" in my target file, all of the topics are included in my Contents folder of my WebHelp output.
Is there any way to exclude unwanted topics from WebHelp without deleting them from the project?

[LTinker68]

What you're doing should be working. You verified that the condition you're applying to the topics is set to exclude in the WebHelp target? And you're excluding the topics in the Content Explorer, not in the TOC, correct? Excluding them in the TOC only excludes them from appearing in the navigation pane of the output -- it doesn't exclude them from the output altogether. If you exclude the topic in the Content Explorer, then not only is it excluded in the output, but its corresponding TOC entry won't appear either.

[rlane]

Yes, I double-checked the target file to ensure that I selected "Exclude" on the Conditions tab. Also, as you stated, I'm setting the conditions on the files in Contents, not in the TOC file.
I decided to try building and publishing to see if the published output was different. This worked, and only the files I wanted in the Output folder were included. I then went back, and ran a build only without publishing, and it now seems to work as I thought it should. While doing this I didn't change any condition setting in the target file or on the topic files. Go figure - it seems to work now.
Thanks for your quick reply.

[LTinker68]

It's a good idea to delete the Output folder before building the output. It could be that the topic wasn't in the output but that you were looking at a cache version of the file in the browser. Deleting the Output folder first tricks the browser into thinking it's going to a new site, so it loads everything from scratch instead of from the cache.

[coleymarie80]

Hi there. I'm resurrecting this topic because I've done all of the above and I still have 2 topics that are being generated when they shouldn't be. They have conditions set to exclude them (which I've checked and rechecked numerous times), in both the TOC and in the Content Explorer. I've checked the box Exclude content not linked directly or indirectly from the target. I've deleted the Output folder. I've tried publishing and then building like rlane did. I'm out of ideas, can anyone help?

[LTinker68]

You said you checked and they have conditions to exclude them, but do they also have the include option selected? An explicit include (i.e., the include condition box is checked) overrides explicit excludes which overrides implicit excludes (i.e., include condition box is not checked). So if you have two conditions applied to the same content, and one condition is set to exclude in the target but the other one is set to include, then the content will be included because the explicit include wins.

[coleymarie80]

I have several outputs, so I'm not telling the topics to NOT generate at all (because I still need them to appear in my other outputs), I'm just telling the topics to be generated for a particular output (and they aren't listening). I don't have any other conditions set to these particular topics, just the one to indicate which output it belongs with.

So, basically...my errant topics are Rheology topics and are tagged purple for rheology. But are showing up in Thermal output, which are tagged red.

[Nita Beck]

As Lisa suggested, examine how you have things set in the targets, not in the topics themselves. In the targets, do you have any explicit Includes set and, if yes, those are likely to be overriding the explicit Excludes.

[Msquared]

Do the stray files actually appear in the WebHelp TOC in the output, or just in the Contents folder? If they are just in the Contents folder, then is there any chance that something that is correctly included via the TOC is linking to those files? You could find that quite easily by doing a text search in the output folder for one of those file names. You will have to use an external tool like Notepad++ (free).

[coleymarie80]

Ah, sorry, I missed that Lisa specified targets. I looked at the target and saw a possibility, so made a change and it worked! Thank you!