RoboHelp Scripts

RoboHelp 8 introduced the scripting feature and came with various prepared scripts. From time to time various people, mostly the RoboHelp developers, have been kind enough to provide further scripts for functionality required by RoboHelp users on the Adobe RoboHelp forums.

Always make a backup of your project before running a script. Like a find and replace operation, they can make changes in seconds that would otherwise take hours or days. They can also wreck a project in seconds if something is not as anticipated. You run these scripts entirely at your own risk.

I have shown the RoboHelp version in anticipation of future versions of RoboHelp to indicate which version the script was designed for.

It is possible that scripts designed for RoboHelp 8 will work in later versions and scripts for later versions will work in RoboHelp 8.
It is also possible using a script in a different version will wreck your project. See the warning above and make a backup first.

To learn more about scripting, the help topic will start you off and there are links to more detailed resources. Click here.

Version	Script	Links	Brief details from thread
9	Various		The following scripts are installed with RoboHelp 9. If you don't any of them in your list of scripts when viewed from Tools > Scripts you need to copy them from your RobHelp installation folder to your profile. Copy the required script(s) from [InstallDir]/RoboHTML/presets/scripts/ to On Windows XP: [USER]/Application Data/Adobe/RoboHTML/9.00/Scripts/Sample Scripts/ On Vista / Windows 7 [USER]/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/RoboHTML/9.00/Scripts/Sample Scripts/
8	Convert topic titles to search keywords	Forum thread Script download	This script will append the topic title to the list of keywords and will not remove the existing keywords. This script is not tested. Test the script on a copy of your project.
8	Remove space after symbols	Forum thread Script download	On upgrading a project you may find an extra space was added after every em dash.
8	Alt Text Updater	Forum thread Script download	When you create a PDF using RoboHelp, the server path will be revealed to anyone hovering over an image. This did not occur in RoboHelp 7 if a screentip had been entered as RoboHelp used that to create Alt Text and Acrobat displayed the contents of that instead. In RoboHelp 8 and 9 the Alt Text is not created automatically. This script creates the Alt Text from the screentip. The instructions are in the forum thread.
8	Generate ePub outputs	Adobe blog	A script to generate ePub format output. Using this script, you can now take your RoboHelp/FrameMaker/Word content to mobile devices and eBook readers. The link to download the script is in the blog. Also see Willam van Weelden's site for an amended script. Willam found some issues with the supplied script and amended it. Click here.
8	Convert Related Links button to a See Also list	Forum thread Script download	The script file will traverse all the topics and snippet files, read all the related topics in the files and replace them with the hyperlinks for those topics. You need to do the following steps Back up your original project, before running this script file. Download the script file. Open RoboHTML 8, go to View>Pods>Script Explorer, and right click and import the downloaded script file. Open the project (which as already backed-up) in RobHTML 8. Select the script in the script explorer pod, right click and select run. The script will convert all the related topics to hyperlinks. You can also change the style of the hyperlinks created in the script file, look for the function AddHyperlinkInTopic in the script file. Here you can add what ever style class name in the hyperlinks.
8	Custom popup resizer	Forum thread Script download	See Using RoboHelp 8 for more information about when to use this script. This script file will increase the width and height of custom popup by 12 for width and 20 for height. It is easy to customize the script based on your specific popup size requirements. Anyone who has installed 8.0.1 or 8.0.2 patch can use this script file. This script also updates the popup with a patched attribute so that the next time you run this script, it should not increase the size of popup again, as it was already patched. If you want to increase the size of popups again by some other amount, you have to set this variable bForceUpdateAll to true.
8	Popup placement fixer	Forum thread Script download	See Using RoboHelp 8 for more information about when to use this script. Basically, the location of the pop up windows is incorrect when in the same topic there is dropdown text. This is a CHM only issue. Poster got: No shadow in all text boxes Box not sized to text in all text boxes Appears top right if there is a dropdown. PG got: No shadow if there is a dropdown Box not sized to text if there is a dropdown Position correct regardless of whether or not there is a dropdown. Update fixes the problem Eileen Palsson had where source code for popups was converted to output code in the source.
8	Indexing based on styles	Forum thread Script download	This script was provided in response to the question: Is it possible to assign index entries using styles? For example I would like to only have words or phrases with a particular heading style display in the index. Open the project. Modify the script file to include the tags you want to scan for. Right now the script searches for h1 and h3 tags, but you can include tags as required and save the script file. Run the script.
8	Image resizer	Forum thread Script download	This script removes the dimensions of all images. They will then open at 100%. On opening a topic, the new size will be written into the code. It has the same result as the "Reset image" operation that can be executed from the image's context menu. This is not an Adobe scrip. It was created by Chashnikov and I have not seen any adverse comments.
8	Show topics Ready for Review	Forum thread Script download to display status in topic Script download to clear status	This script was provided in response to the question: I would like to be able to set the Status of a topic to "Ready for Review" and then have that status visible in the topic when it is published, so that I can send the generated help files to reviewers/testers and they can see which topics are ready for review/test. Is there an easy way to do this?
8	Show topics that are not in a browse sequence	Forum thread Script download	The easy way to find out which topics have not been included in a browse sequence.
8	Update FrameMake files when generating WebHelp from the command line.	Forum thread Script download	If any of the .fm files are changed, the changes are NOT propogated to the WebHelp because running the generate command from RHCL does not update the linked .fm files.
8	Change image format	Forum thread Script download	If you need to change the format of images, follow the steps below. The script is set to convert .bmp in topics to .png but can be amended to other formats. Go to any image editing software and change all the images in the project folder from .bmp to .png. Do not change the image file name, just change the extension. If you have an image with name sun.bmp change it to sun.png, in the same folder where sun.bmp is present. Download the script file on your machine. Open the project in RoboHelp 8, open Script explorer pod and import the script file you have downloaded. Select the script file and click on run or right click script file and select run. The script file will read all the topics and snippet files present in your project and read the image tag. if there is an image file with .bmp extension, it will change that image file extension to .png and update the topic file.

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Topic Revisions

Date	Changes to this page
10 Jun 2011	Further scripts added plus list of RoboHelp 9 installed scripts.
29 July 2010	ePub script added.
23 Mar 2010	New Topic