Unresolved Links

[wgaffga]

We have a large project in which the Primary Target is WebHelp and there are numerous other targets, subsets, which go to PDF. These subset items are heavily conditionalized. When I generate the project there are numerous errors regarding unresolved links. The unresolved links are typically from a cross-reference to text that has been conditionalized out of the PDF output.

Unfortunately the generated report, the link inspector and the Broken Links tools do not help find the offending items.

• The generated report shows the target file
• The Broken Links tool shows ... I don't know what all as it is reporting more broken links than the output log file does. Additionally, it does not show any of the items the log file does; there are no matches.
• The Link Viewer makes you open each topic to review the links. This at least shows you a broken link such as those outside of the project.

So, beyond these imperfect or useless functions, the only way I have, that I know of, to find these things is to go through the PDF file and find the bad links. This is made easier by being in an edit mode in Acrobat Pro, but is still ridiculously cumbersome.

Am I missing some tool/technique to more readily find these offending items?

[lacastle]

the log usually shows you which topic has the broken link in it, and which topic the link is supposed to go to. do you not see this?
are your cross references turning into dummy text, or are the links there and not working? when i have hyperlinks in a PDF topic, i have made my stylesheet make them look the same as regular next (not blue/underlined). no one will know they are hyperlinks to be clicked (and wouldn't work) unless they specifically hover their mouse over the words for some reason.

[ChoccieMuffin]

What do your cross-refs say? If I get a broken cross-ref is usually says "see [title] on page 1" rather than on a proper page number, so I search through my generated PDF for "on page 1". That finds all of them (as well as the occasionally x-ref to page 17, but that's ok, I can ignore those ones).