Search excludes file not being picked up by DITA-to-webhelp transform

[rheath]

Versions: oXygen XML Editor 17.1 and 18.1
I've set up an excludes list and followed the steps listed in Bogdan's reply here: topic14623.html However, the resulting webhelp search continues to show results that are excluded in my list.

This is the content of my list, which is in the top level of my project:
deployment/common/architecture_ha.html
deployment/common/config_load_balancer.html
deployment/common/deploy_atscale_ha_cluster_gbq.html
deployment/common/deploy_atscale_ha_cluster.html
deployment/common/deploy_single_instance_gbq.html
deployment/common/deploy_single_instance.html
deployment/common/install_rpm_package_ha.html
deployment/common/install_tar_package_ha.html
deployment/common/requirements_clusters.html

Is there a bug in 17.1 and in 18.1 that prevents the exclude list from being used in the transform?

[Costin]

Hi rheath,

Please note that the "webhelp.search.custom.excludes.file" parameter was made available for the oXygen WebHelp scenarios starting with version 18.1.
There was no such parameter in oXygen XML v17.1.

I've just tested in the latest maintenance build of oXygen XML Editor v18.1 (build 2017020917) the behavior of both DITA Map > WebHelp Classic and DITA Map > WebHelp Responsive transformation scenarios, when the "webhelp.search.custom.excludes.file" parameter is set and points to a .properties file containing the name patterns for the HTML files which should not be indexed.
For both scenarios, the files defined in the excludes.properties file I've created were ignored from the resulted WebHelp search.

From your .properties file contents, I noticed that all the HTML files you need to be omitted from indexing seem to be located inside the
"deployment/common/" folder.
Could you please make sure that all those htmls are directly in the "common" folder and not in other child folders of either the "deployment" or the "common" folders?

In case they are located inside another folder hierarchy, please make sure you use wildcards to define the path name patterns. You can find examples of using wildcards HERE.

If all HTML files from the list in your .properies file are located in the "/common" folder, another possible cause which could interfere with the exclusion parameter functionality would be if you are using a custom (external) DITA-OT in oXygen v18.1, not the default DITA-OT 2.x that comes bundled with oXygen, or if you upgraded from an older version but kept the DITA-OT from that older version.
In order to avoid this, you should download and install a fresh copy of oXygen XML Editor v18.1 from the software archive in a separate folder and retry the procedure steps.

Let me know if this helps or if you need additional assistance.

Regards,
Costin