Hello,

I have downloaded and installed the Help Builder Shareware version 5.32.
My Windows: Windows 7 64x

Starting the application the following error message comes up:
"OLE-Error Code 0x800a01e1: Unknown COM-Status code"
System Error #1426

1. The error comes the first time right before the application is opened.
   
2. A help project cannot be opened. The error message comes again right away when using the "Open" menu command.
   
3. There is also a message box: "Program error" -- "Unknown Element OTOPIC."
   

Can anybody help? I would like to evaluate version 5.3 .

Regards, Werner S.

Hmmm... not sure...

Just to test I just installed WWH on my other machine after removing it and then also removing the existing Documents folder with the config. It starts and runs fine.

Since you're running on ancient Windows 7 it's likely due to the lack of Internet Explorer 11 which Help Builder has a requirement on:

Download Internet Explorer 11

which is listed on the Download page.

+++ Rick ---

I will install it on a Windows 10 system to see it it works there.
I will let you know the result.

Regards, Werner

As mentioned you can install IE 11 on Windows 7 (a good idea anyway as it replaces the ancient IE7 install) and I suspect that would make it work...

+++ Rick ---

Hello Rick, on Windows 10 I can install and run the Help Builder 5. OK.

But: As the Help Builder version 4 the Help Builder 5 also removes/rewrites the windows entrie(s) in the [WINDOWS] section (.hhp) file -- no change/fix.

I will stay using version 4 and and my workaround compiling the project with the MS "HTML Help Workshop".

Thank you for your support.

Regards, Werner S.

The help file project files are always generated when you create the project so they are overwritten every time. I think what you're looking for lives in the .hhb file.

What exactly are you customizing in the the Workshop?

+++ Rick ---

Hello Rick,

What exactly are you customizing in the the Workshop?

See my previous/other issue:
"Help Builder 4.68: Error #1881 on "Topic Edit View" command"
https://support.west-wind.com/Thread6030U4D6R.wwt

VBA looks for the help windows "main" when opening a help topic. So a 'main" windows was/is added to the .hhp file.
It is intended to specify further/other windows in the [WINDOWS] section.

[WINDOWS]
wwHelpWindow=,"ww.hhc","ww.hhk","indexpage.htm","indexpage.htm",,,,,0x63520,,0x387e,[0,0,700,480],,,,,,,0 main=,"ww.hhc","ww.hhk","indexpage.htm","indexpage.htm",,,,,0x63520,,0x387e,[0,0,700,480],,,,,,,0

Regards, Werner

Just curious, but couldn't you change the VBA to use wwHelpWindow instead of main? As far as I know there's no such thing as a 'standard' window name, and by default there's no special window name assigned at all in HHWS. The name is used only so that Help Builder can preset the window defaults for size and activation on startup.

I can't remember why I specifically chose wwHelpWindow as the default window name - I think it had to do with the old HTML rendering implementation that used frames and the main frame was named wwHelpWindow. These days wwHelp no longer uses frames so that shouldn't matter. I think I could safely set the Window reference to main without breaking anything - I'll take a look.

+++ Rick ---