One of the values provided to Help Builder is not valid

AlexWiley

ERROR: [ArgumentException] One of the values provided to Help Builder is not valid. Check config files. Help Builder will stop processing. More information: startIndex cannot be larger than length of string.
Parameter name: startIndex

Can anyone help suggest a way of tackling this absolutely useless error message from the 2009 SP1 Help Builder? I'm at a complete loss. Creating online help has been a terrible pain, the help guide is vague and poorly structured. Most of what I can find online references much older versions with dead links and software tools that aren't around anymore, and Adobe's trial download page of Robohelp is even down.

Any input is greatly appreciated.

DFH86

I've encountered the exact same problem as Alex.

Help would be greatly appreciated, as it has been very time consuming so far.

Here's a screenshot of my Help Builder setup:

edu_DK

Luc van Vugt prompted me to look into this (I'm one of his ex-colleagues), but I might not be able to help much.

I am not quite sure where the real problem lies, but I suspect that this has to do with some invalid HTML in one or more of your Help topics.
The cryptic "startIndex" parameter is used deep inside the HelpBuilder code for checking for invalid HTML that will prevent the tool from building the Help project successfully.
The people responsible for HelpBuilder are currently on vacation, so I can't give you a clear workaround - sorry! But things to look out for can be problems such as tags that are supposed to be empty but which contain characters - or close tags that contain whitespace or a character. You should be able to run a search tool across your topics for problematic tags like that.

I hope this helps! If you continue to be stuck, please write to navhelp@microsoft.com, and the Help team will investigate further.

Also - we really are working on a new version of HelpBuilder, and your feedback is very much taken into consideration!

Best Regards
Eva
Microsoft Dynamics NAV technical writer

alekp

This error can be result of a bug in Help Builder connected with table of contents sorting (hhc file sorting). The easiest workaround is to turn off table of contents sorting. You can do that in config.default.xml file. Find the string <sort>true</sort> and change it to <sort>false</sort>.