Merging WebHelp Using RoboHelp for Word

1. Set up the intranet destinations under a single folder. As this is compliance stuff, under a compliance folder I've created a QQS (quality) folder and an EMS (environment) folder.
2. Set up separate RH for Word projects on local drive - one for QQS & one for EMS
3. All the links to the other help projects are set up with placeholder links as HTML Jumps
   
   HTML Jumps require an address, so used "http://www.qqs_link.com/" as a placeholder
   
   To point to a topic at this point, all I did was to append the qqs folder and topic.htm to the end of this.
4. Compile the EMS webhelp project on the local drive
5. Copy the !SSL!/webhelp folder contents to the destination intranet/Compliance/EMS
6. Compile any other projects and move the webhelp contents to the intranet folder (useful if more than 2 projects that interlink)
7. Do a search and replace on each placeholder
   
   The placeholder will have been compiled into an <A HREF> tag so the search is for HREF="placeholder"
   
   For me that was HREF="http://www.qqs_link.com/"
   
   The replacement is a relative path from the location of the source file (typically a folder within the Compliance/EMS directory) to the start file of the Compliance/QQS directory. This is ../../QQS/qqs.htm.
   
   This make it work, but it appears in the same window. So by prepending target="_blank" to the HREF, it opens in a new window each and every time.
   
   Also, if the reference is pointing to a specific topic in the qqs helpfile, then you need to specify this. As we have detailed the folder and topic above (step 3), append the ?# to the replacement string. The ? makes sure there are no complications with already open pages, where nothing seems to happen.
   
   So the final replacement string becomes:  Target="_blank" HREF="../../QQS/qqs.htm?#
   
   Notice there is no closing quote on either the search or replacement strings.
8. Test the links!

This seemed to work for me. A couple of comments about it:

If you have links to the start page and topics within the helpfile, you need two separate placeholders - one for the start page where you won't append the "?#" and one for the topic where you do append it. By moving all the help projects to the destination first, you can do a search and replace on the folder above (compliance) and it will update many projects in one sweep. It is very important to remember the search strings and also the replacement strings. So I have included those into an document in the project itself so it cannot be lost!!

Jeremy Wadley.