A broken link can occur in RoboHelp if the topic you are linking to has been deleted, renamed or removed outside of RoboHelp. You are most likely to experience broken links when you import documents that were linked to other documents that no longer exist or have been moved.
Show Broken Links
You can run across a broken link by chance simply by right-clicking a topic and choosing Show Topic Links.
In the picture below, a topic named Leave Policy displays a red line. This topic is looking for another topic named Vac_Policy.htm when it should be pointing to Policy.htm. Ooops.
In the picture above, the problem is that the link was created manually by another developer who did not use RoboHelp’s Link tool. The name of the file is incorrect and RoboHelp has no idea what to do about the problem, only that there is a problem.
View the contents of the Broken Links folder
- On the Project pane, open the Broken Links folder
In this instance, the Broken Links folder indicates that Vac_Policy.htm, which is needed in a link in the Leave_and_Vacation topic, does not exist.
Resolve Broken Links
- Choose Tools > Resolve Broken Links
The Resolve Broken Links dialog box appears. As indicated in the Broken Links folder, the Leave Policy contains a "Jump" (or link) that is looking for a missing topic ("Vac_Policy.htm").
- Click the Edit button
The topic with the broken link will open.
- Find and double-click the broken link in the topic to display the Hyperlink dialog box
- Select the correct topic from the Select destination (file or URL) list
- Click OK
- Save your work.
Once the project has been saved, the link shown in the Broken Links folder will go away.
You can either Edit the topic and redirect the wayward link, or click the Restore button. If you choose to click the Restore button, a new topic would be created using the name of the missing topic. And BAM! The broken link would be resolved. But hold that BAM. The broken link would be resolved, but you’ve got this new topic. It would be empty so you would now have to populate it with whatever data was missing. Yikes! What data was that anyway?
For my money, the best first step is to try and redirect the link to the missing topic. What you’re hoping is that the topic hasn’t been deleted. Rather, you’re hoping the missing topic has simply been renamed outside of RoboHelp.
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