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I'm writing in the web browser editor, and some chapters of my book are not showing up. What can I do?
I'm writing in the web browser editor, and some chapters of my book are not showing up. What can I do?

Keywords: chapters not showing up in preview, Browser mode, issue, problem, content

Leanpub Support avatar
Written by Leanpub Support
Updated over 2 years ago

We've had a few reports from time to time about chapters not showing up in the in-browser text editor. We sorry for the frustrating experience if this is happening to you! Hopefully this article will help you resolve the issue.

Leading Spaces

Sometimes leading spaces (spaces at the beginning of a line) or indents can confuse Leanpub's book generators.

For example, you start and end a code sample with three backticks, like this:

However, if you have some spaces at the beginning of the "closing" backticks, like this:

...that will probably confuse our book generators, which don't know they're supposed to close the code block at this point.

Unsupported Characters in Filenames

If you use certain characters in a file/chapter name (this is the name you see in the menu on the left in the in-browser editor), then the file/chapter may not show up when you generate a version of the book.

We don't have a list of unsupported characters (though we do know Russian unicode characters are not supported), but if you only use English letters and numbers, it should work.

Please note that the file names in this menu are only visible to you, and are not shown to readers.

Excluded Filenames

It is possible you have encountered an embarrassing bug, where some words in filenames cause no further content to be processed by our book generators, when an author is using our in-browser editor writing mode.

A recent example of this happening was using the word "feedback" in a filename. Once the word "feedback" was removed from the filename, everything worked successfully. (At the end of this article, we're going to start making a list as further instances of this issue are reported to us.)

You can change a filename by clicking on the gear wheel you will see, if you hover your mouse over the filename, like this:

If you change the name of the first file that does not generate in your book, then that file, and the subsequent files in your manuscript, should generate properly, the next time you make a preview - unless there  is another instance of the same problem, further along in your filenames.

Please note that these filenames do not appear anywhere in your book or to a reader of the book, when they buy it, so you can name them anything you like.

Sorry for the trouble here. If you come across a word that causes this problem, please let us know by emailing us at hello@leanpub.com.

List of Bad Filenames

Please note that if any of the sequences of characters are used a filename, that may cause are book generators to ignore that chapter and all subsequent chapters.

So, for example, since feedback causes the problem, a filed named somefeedbackfromreaders will fail, just like a file that is only called feedback will fail.

Here's the list:

()

feedback

backmatter

(Anything with the sequence "back" in it, basically)

frontmatter

lists


If you have any feedback or questions about this article, please email the Leanpub team about it at hello@leanpub.com!

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Interested in creating your first Leanpub book? Here are some quick tutorials for our most popular writing modes: http://help.leanpub.com/en/articles/3088382-quick-walkthroughs-for-getting-started-on-a-leanpub-book

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