AD + AP search help doesn't work for me

[GrahamHCB]

I've used the MAS versions including now 1.4, and all the AD and AP Betas but the search function under Help< Affinity Photo/Designer Help< Search Help has never worked for me. I type in a word, click search and the wheel just spins and no results  ever appear.

 

I'm on a late 2013 27" iMac 3.5 GHz Intel Core i7, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB, 16GB Ram running 10.9.5 if that helps at all.

 

Anyone got any ideas what the problem might be?

 

Graham

[jmac]

I have had this problem as well. It is so aggravating I don't even bother looking there anymore.

 

GrahamHCB under the Resources section you will find a couple threads where users have uploaded ibook versions of the Help files. You might have better luck with those.

[MEB]

Hi GrahamHCB, jmac,

Are you running any antivirus or any other security software?

[smadell]

Hi MEB

 

I've had the same problem - probably since Day 1. To answer your question, I am running Avira anti-virus software. It would be great if I could get the Help system to work.

[smadell]

To clarify...  The Help system itself works EXCEPT for the search function. Like GrahamHCB, trying to search for an item is fruitless. Manually clicking on a topic works as expected.

[Paul Bravery]

Hi GrahamHCB, jmac,

Are you running any antivirus or any other security software?

The Help search function seems to work fine for me, it includes system results as well. 

I'm using a late 2012 iMac 21.5", 16GB RAM, i7, 1TB Fusion HDD, nVidia 9400M. 

El Capitan. 

Antivirus is Sophos for Mac. 

[jmac]

I'm using no anti-virus. 2009 27" iMac, 12GB RAM, Mavericks

 

I just tested this again as I haven't tried it in awhile...After clicking "Help" in the Affinity Photo menu I typed "brush" in the search bar. It returned a drop down list from which I made a selection and the larger separate help window opened with information about my selection. But when I the tried to search for the word "gradient" in the search bar of the larger help window I get the spinning cursor forever. I repeated this switching the "brush" and "gradient" terms with the same result. Search for a word under the Help menu you get a list to choose from. Select one of those you get the Help window and information about your selection. But try to make another search in that window you get nothing.

[GrahamHCB]

Thanks jmac I'll check out the ibook option.

 

@MEB I'm not running any anti-virus or security software.

 

@smadell yes as you say search doesn't work, clicking on a topic on the left works as expected.

[GrahamHCB]

 Hi jmac,

 

I just tried out exactly what you wrote here, but even when I click on an item in the drop down list all I get is the spinning wheel. So whether I type in a word and click Search or choose from the drop down and then click makes no difference. It just doesn't do anything.

 

I'm using no anti-virus. 2009 27" iMac, 12GB RAM, Mavericks

 

I just tested this again as I haven't tried it in awhile...After clicking "Help" in the Affinity Photo menu I typed "brush" in the search bar. It returned a drop down list from which I made a selection and the larger separate help window opened with information about my selection. But when I the tried to search for the word "gradient" in the search bar of the larger help window I get the spinning cursor forever. I repeated this switching the "brush" and "gradient" terms with the same result. Search for a word under the Help menu you get a list to choose from. Select one of those you get the Help window and information about your selection. But try to make another search in that window you get nothing.

[peterbolson]

I've always had this problem. Never been able to get anything other than the spinning wheel. I have the 1.4 update & am using OSX 10.9.5 and no antivirus software.

 

I don't even bother to look now & just look through the drop down list on the left but it would be nice if search worked.

[MEB]

Thank you all for the info.

I will raise this with the dev team.

[daklotz]

The help function does not work at all for me. The window opens and the only thing that appears is a box with a question mark and "The selected topic is currently unavailable." If I type anything in the Search box, all I get is the spinning beachball. This is very aggravating, as I recently purchased Affinity Photo and I'm trying to understand how to do the simplest things. For instance, I can't figure out how to rotate the image at an arbitrary angle; all i can find in the menus is rotate left or rotate right, which rotates to some fixed angle that doesn't seem to be able to be changed.The program looks great, but this is really annoying. Running OS X 10.11.4 on a 2011 27" iMac.

[Madame]

The help function does not work at all for me. The window opens and the only thing that appears is a box with a question mark and "The selected topic is currently unavailable." If I type anything in the Search box, all I get is the spinning beachball. This is very aggravating, as I recently purchased Affinity Photo and I'm trying to understand how to do the simplest things. For instance, I can't figure out how to rotate the image at an arbitrary angle; all i can find in the menus is rotate left or rotate right, which rotates to some fixed angle that doesn't seem to be able to be changed.The program looks great, but this is really annoying. Running OS X 10.11.4 on a 2011 27" iMac.

I can't help you with the help menu issue you're having.

But about the rotating; have you tried to look in the transform panel. Type in the angle you want. Hope this helps!

 

 

[R C-R]

Please forgive the lack of a more technical discussion of this but I have noticed that the Mac help system sometimes gets messed up enough to cause the help "book" for one or more apps to become very sluggish or completely unresponsive.

 

I don't know exactly why this is but it may have something to do with the help file related caches in the user Library folder (like ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.helpd) becoming corrupted or bloated for some reason.

 

Whatever the cause, what seems to restore the responsiveness to an acceptable (if not blazingly fast) level is to rebuild the help system. There is probably more than one way to do this but the only one I have used is the one provided in the Onyx utility. If you try using this it is very important to get the version for the version of OS X you are running. In general, there is nothing to be gained by using any of its many features on a regular basis (& some of the "maintenance" routines when not necessary will temporarily slow down your Mac) but for this specific issue running only the Maintenance > Rebuilding section's "Mac Help" item executes very quickly, does not require logging out or restarting the Mac, & at least for me it has eliminated or reduced the recurrence of this problem.