MadCap Software Forums

Hi, can anyone explain the difference between Include and Exclude for Conditional Text settings for Targets? Specifically what is the difference between setting exclude and not setting include?

There are two ways to set conditions for a target, right click on a target, choose properties then Conditional Text (you get one column here) or left click on the target and select Conditional Text (This gives you two columns: include and exclude). What is the purpose of these different condition settings?

Thanks for your help

By default, Flare always includes, so that an exclude has to be set specifically. One could argue that then an include condition is not needed, but I think it allows the TW to make a very definitive decision. In case you check both include and exclude, the include will win.

HTH

As Ramon mentioned, content tagged with a condition tag is automatically included unless you check exclude. I think the Include is there so you have the option of including content that would otherwise be excluded because it's tagged with two or more tags (one of which you're excluding for all other content). The Flare Help system has a good example that depicts this scenario. See Features > Targets > More About Targets > Associating Condition Tags with Targets.

Lorraine

If you have content that is tagged with 2 different conditions, and include will always override an exclude, so this is great when you have a topic tagged with 2 condtions such as RED and BLUE, and your target you only want the RED Condtion, and excluse the blue, So that the topic will appear because it tagged with both RED and BLUE amd the RED is included.

Madcap Guru wrote:If you have content that is tagged with 2 different conditions, and include will always override an exclude, so this is great when you have a topic tagged with 2 condtions such as RED and BLUE, and your target you only want the RED Condtion, and excluse the blue, So that the topic will appear because it tagged with both RED and BLUE amd the RED is included.

That even works with inherited conditions:
- Folder X has condition RED
- File Y in folder X has condition BLUE
- Target has BLUE included and RED excluded
=>
File Y is part of the help, the rest of folder X isn't.

Thanks for the clarification everyone.