Importing Word Documents

What Goes Wrong?

Many of the problems seen with importing Word documents arise from the fact that in versions before RoboHelp X5 the styles were created inline and that overrides the style sheet in use. (Cascading Styles are explained in more detail in the HTML topic.)

Things changed with RoboHelp X5. When importing a Word document into RoboHelp X5 or RoboHelp 6, RoboHelp creates a style sheet which you can then change to your own and this does address many of the appearance problems. Some text does however still seem to end up with inline styles which override the style sheet and there are some other problem areas. Your options are described further on but regardless of version, the things that typically go wrong when importing from Word are:

• Before RoboHelp X5, the html tags were used more to define inline styles that give the appearance of the source document. That causes the inline styles to override what is defined in the style sheet. Initially that may not be a problem but what tends to happen is that when the style sheet is changed later, the imported topic maintains the original appearance and the cause is not always realised.
• A classic sign of a topic created by importing a Word document is that instead of just applying a <p> tag, a class is applied so you get <p class=InLineNormal>. If you just accept the appearance as it is, things will probably be OK, initially! Try to change things though and a mini war breaks out. You change the definition of the <p> tag in your style sheet and it will display correctly for any paragraphs you have added since importing as they will probably have the "plain" <p> tag applied. But all those paragraphs you think of as being "Normal" (to use Word's terminology) will be unchanged, the class settings will apply to them. You could define the class in your style sheet but, depending on your version of RoboHelp, you might find the style is defined in an embedded style sheet rather than a css file in which case the embedded definition will override and you are no further forward! This one can also cause problems if you want printed documentation so best to clean it up.
• This is a bullet point (unordered) list. In Word, if you placed the cursor in front of the first character and then moved the cursor left, it would be in front of the bullet. The same would apply to a list created in RoboHelp HTML. In a topic created by importing from Word, the item will look the same but there will be spaces between the bullet and the first character. Also if you want to add another bullet point, the appearance of the imported bullet items will be different.
• The same problem occurs with numbered (ordered) lists. The numbering is just like you typed the numbers rather than creating a proper list so if you add a new item, you have to redo all the numbering.
• The appearance of tables can leave something to be desired.
• The text of a bookmark will have a grey background in the WYSIWYG editor. It does not show in the compiled or generated output but it makes it more difficult to judge appearance when editing.
• The import may look acceptable until you try creating a printed document. Then either the appearance comes out wrong or some of the topics do not print even though they are in the layout and not excluded by the build expression used. There's more about that in Print Issues.

Mixing Oil and Water

It is quite common for questions on the RoboHelp forum to show the poster's frustration that Word documents and HTML topics do not convert without problems. This applies to both the importing of Word documents and the creation of printed documentation from your topics. As my very good friend Rick Stone (RoboWizard) points out, you are mixing oil and water and that can be tricky!

How to Import

The method varies with the version of RoboHelp that you are using. Whichever version you are using, I suggest that what you do is create a new RoboHelp project and import the document into that rather than mess up your carefully crafted project. Also if you intend to create printed documentation later, then try it early on as often problems only manifest themselves when you create the printed output.

Versions Before X5

You can either follow M J Plaster's method for Version 2002 or follow the principles for other versions up to and including X4.

Alternatively you can use my method which I find considerably easier.

RoboHelp X5

Prior to X5, the style sheet was embedded into the imported topic and classes were created referencing the embedded style sheet. Whilst classes are still created, X5 puts the styles into a style sheet making switching to your own much easier if you follow some basics.

See Importing Using the X5 Wizard for what to do.

RoboHelp 6

The prime difference in RoboHelp 6 is that bulleted and numbered lists import correctly.

See Importing Using the RoboHelp 6 Wizard for what to do.

RoboHelp 7

Over the past few months I have had to import a number of Word documents into both RoboHelp 6 and 7. The initial attempts produced topics that were completely unacceptable and in identifying the causes, I found more about what is behind peoples' comments about the import not working. The reality was less about RoboHelp's shortcomings as already covered and more about importing poorly formatted documents. I found the documents I had been supplied with were very poor with text formatted to make it look like headings, multiple variants of list with different bullets and indents for no good reason and tabbing used instead of indents, and that's just for starters. Typically these documents took me a whole day to clean them up. So please remember, garbage in - garbage out.

By following the procedures described for RoboHelp 6 and cleaning up the documents in Word first, the changes needed in RoboHelp 7 after the import were minimal.

I never import Word documents directly into my projects just in case anything goes wrong. I create a project just for the purpose of the import and get things how I want them in that project. Then I import the cleaned up import into my live project.