Topic title/TOC syncing not working in Flare 2017?

[chrispitude]

I just upgrade to Flare 2017 and I was happy to see the new topic title/TOC synchronization feature!

What works - when I create a new topic and drag it into the TOC, the TOC entry is shown in blue and contains the H1 test.

What doesn't work - when I open that topic and modify the H1, the TOC does not update accordingly.

I cannot get the TOC to update by quitting/restarting Flare, building the project, closing/opening the TOC and/or topic, etc. If I delete the TOC entry and re-add the file to the TOC, it has the updated TOC text, but again it will not synchronize to additional changes.

Is anyone using this feature, and is your TOC updating according to topic H1 edits? Thanks!

[cdschroeder]

Do you see the problem in your output? If so, check the topic properties and make sure that your title is blank (or always use first topic heading). If not, it's probably just a problem with temporary files not updating.

For the record, mine updates if I close/re-open the TOC.

[roboHAL]

The feature is working as intended for me too.

Perhaps a good idea is to "clean" the project. Can't hurt and can only help:

> Close Flare.
> Browse to the folder with your Flare project using Windows Explorer
> Delete the Analyzer and Output folder(or move the Output folder to a different location if you do not want to lose any previously built outputs)
> Browse into your Project folder and delete the "Users" folder inside

> Then, navigate to C:\Users\[Your User]\Appdata\Roaming\MadCap Software\Flare
> Select and delete the CatapultMDIEditor folder

[chrispitude]

It must have been something transient. Now it works, although as cdschroeder says, the TOC does not update until it's opened/closed (strange since changes to other files like CSS are detected and updated immediately). Previously, this same topic didn't update its TOC entry even after restarting Flare.

I'll keep an eye on it. roboHAL, I might do a preemptive cleanup of my project to be safe.

Thanks!

[Louise Bennett]

Hi guys,

Related to this I am seeing some strange behaviour re the TOC entries. I can see the TOC entries just fine but others in my team only see [%=System.LinkedTitle%].

Is there something extra we need to do so that everyone in the team sees the topic titles in the TOC?

Louise.

[cdschroeder]

Louise, is everyone on your team using Flare 2017? The TOC sync is new to 2017, so my guess is that people on an older version would see the variable you mentioned in place of the topic title.

[Louise Bennett]

Aha - maybe that is it. I am the only one on 2017 so I'll get the others to upgrade and see if that fixes it. Thanks!

[ChoccieMuffin]

Does anyone know if there's a way to turn this annoying feature OFF? I can't see the benefit of it, and I'd rather not change just for change's sake.
< removes miserable old fart hat and puts it back in the drawer for later >

[cdschroeder]

Does anyone know if there's a way to turn this annoying feature OFF? I can't see the benefit of it, and I'd rather not change just for change's sake.
< removes miserable old fart hat and puts it back in the drawer for later >

Not to my knowledge. Although personally, I was quite excited to implement this feature my projects. As I'm building a new help file from scratch, sometimes I change topic titles and forget to fix them in the TOC. This solves that headache and is one less thing I have to check before publishing. It's also great for legacy projects where again, over time, people have changed topic titles and forgot to update the TOC. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see a downside unless there's somewhere you want the TOC title to differ from the topic title. And in my case, those occurances are rare enough that I don't mind fixing the title manually. But that's just my two cents. Maybe there's another negative aspect I'm missing?

The good news for you though, is that it won't affect your existing TOC entries unless you manually edit them.

[BedfordWriter]

It's all in the properties of your menu entry. The old default was to copy the heading and use it for the heading and you'd have to edit that if you changed the heading later. The new is to use a variable (the stuff with % signs) so that it dynamically updates with the heading. You can choose all kinds of variables instead of the heading.

You can still edit the menu entry as you always did. Personally, I love the new variable, but still edit a few menu entries to be more succinct than the topic heading.

[rogersm]

Hi, does anyone else find that the build time for a target is substantially slower when the topic titles are synced with the TOC? It previously took about 15 minutes to build a target but with the synchronization on, it is taking about an hour.