I received an email recently where a RoboHelp author had removed a topic from the TOC, but was distressed to learn that users could still use the Search tab to find the topic. In addition, the topic appeared on the index tab.
As this developer discovered, simply omitting a topic from the TOC does not prevent it from appearing in the generated output. When the project is generated, users who happen to Search for a word or phrase that actually appears in the topic will stumble upon the topic. Not only that, if you run the Smart Index Wizard, the topic will likely be added to the index (you'd have to manually remove the keyword from the index prior to generating).
Short of deleting a topic from the project, what's a developer to do? Read on…
- On the Conditional Build Tags pod, create a new condition
- Right-click a topic and choose Properties
- On the Advanced tab, select the condition you created from the Top-level Tags area (or use one of the two default conditions, Print or Online)
- Show the Properties of a layout (on the Single Source Layouts pod)
- Click the Define button to the right of Conditional Build Expression drop-down menu
- Double-click the tag you selected in step 3 above to move it to the Exclude from output area
- Click OK
Notice that the expression you created now appears in the Conditional Build Expression drop-down menu. If you generate this layout now, the topic you attached to the Top-level tag will not appear anywhere in the layout (not the TOC, not on the Index and not via Search).
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