Hanging up in Help...

[VA12]

Hi. Quick question from a relative beginner.

 

I've got a solution put together in FMP 8.5 that I'm happy with, but it is occasionally crashing when I open Help and do a search in help. It hangs at the moment I hit "enter" in the Help search function.

 

Is this a quirk related to the application, or is it possibly a sign of a corrupted file?

 

Please tell me what you think. I don't relish the thought of rebuilding my solution, but would rather face the music now than later.

 

Thanks,

 

VA

[VA12]

Sorry, forgot to mention this is in Windows XP.

[David Head]

Are you talking about Help that you have built in your solution? Or are you talking about accessing the standard FileMaker Pro Help installing with the application? Is it only on your machine or on all machines?

[VA12]

David, I'm referring to the standard FMP help in the FMP application, not anything I built into my little solution.

 

At the moment, I am the only user, so I couldn't tell you if it's happening on other machines.

[VA12]

Let me correct my English, please.

 

I'm the only user. There are no other machines.

[AHunter3]

What happens if you open FileMaker, do NOT open your database file, but just go straight to the Help menu and search for some terms? Crash or no crash?

 

If no crash, quit out of Help. now create a brand new database file. Make some fields, put in some sample data. Now go to the Help menu and look something up. Crash or no crash?

 

If no crash there either, quit out of Help again. Now open your database file. Now open Help and search for something. Crash?

 

Since you say your problem is intermittent (not all the time) you will have to do this several times to see if you get a pattern. But you need to find out of the crashes in Help occur only when it is your original, specific database file that is open, or if it's just that Help tends to crash, period.

 

IF it is indeed mostly crashing only when your database file is open, try having your file be in a different context and see if there's a pattern THERE. Does it mainly or only crash when you are in the ScriptMaker? Does it mainly or only crash when you are in Layout Mode on Layout #2? The FileMaker Help tries to be "intuitive" and pop up a start-off screen that's context-appropriate so it is possible that one context, for some reason, makes it crash-prone.

 

Also: should I assume that you aren't always trying to look up the SAME thing in Help, that the search term is different each time you've crashed?