Validating a DITA Map

You should validate your maps regularly to make sure that your topics are valid, and all of the relationships between them are working. Changing one topic, image, or piece of metadata may create errors in references that rely on them. You may not discover these problems all at once. Validate your map to catch all of these kinds of problems. The longer you wait between validating your maps, the more difficult it may be to detect and correct any errors you find.

To validate a map:

In the DITA Maps Manager view, make sure that the tab that holds your root map is selected and that the Root map selection is set either to the name of your root map or to <current map>.
It is a good practice to refresh your DITA map before running the validation process. To do so, select the DITA map in the DITA Maps Manager view and click Reload (F5).
Click the Validate and Check for Completeness button on the DITA Maps Manager toolbar to open the DITA Map Completeness Check dialog box.
If you are using profiling, check the Use DITAVAL filters box and select the appropriate option.
Select any other options you want to check.
Click Check.
The validator runs over the entire map. This process may take a while if the map is large. If there are any errors or warnings, they are displayed in a separate message pane at the bottom of the editor. You can click each error or warning to jump to the file where the problem was found.