Snippets

Typical Rick! After I told someone that I didn't think you could change the default width when you use RoboHelp's Insert | HTML | Insert Line function, Rick posts the answer! Neat trick sir. Here's what Rick posted.

You have to close RoboHelp and open your Registry Editor.

All disclaimers apply. Don't come cryin to me if you munge your registry and don't have a backup. Yadda yadda yadda.

Got Regedit open? Cool. Try navigating to this HKEY:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\RoboHelp\7.00\RoboEditor\Defaults

There are many many entries in this spot. You want to locate the one that reads:
InsertHRSample

Double-click that entry and you should get a dialog allowing you to change its value. Mine looked like this before:
<hr style="width: 50%; float: aligncenter;">

I modified it and now it looks like this:
<hr style="width: 95%; float: aligncenter;">

Close Regedit and restart RoboHelp. Insert a Horizontal Rule and bask in the glory of your new desired width.

Click this link for a demo of the activation process for these versions. The activation of version X5 and before can no longer be done online.

X5

Click this link and download replacement files so that activation is not required.

X4

For all earlier versions that require activation, phone your local telephone activation centre.

Start the installation process to get the code that will be required. You can also email and there will be an option to do that during the installation process.

In this thread Pete Lees points to Helpware's article explaining how this can be caused by links to topics outside the project. In case the thread is not available, it can be read in this text file.

In another thread, Leon Descoteaux (MergeThis) suggested corruption in the single source layout and creating a new one fixed the problem.

First let me explain "Unknown". I saw this link while browsing and made a note of the site below but not of where I found the link. So my thanks to whoever found the site, whoever you are!

OK. Sometimes the problem is not learning the tool but learning the job. That's where this link might help you. I don't agree with all the detail but nonetheless there is some good information. Approach what you read this way, as you read the pages, don't treat them as gospel but as food for thought. There's certainly more information about your new environment here than anywhere else I have found.

Click here. to go to Wikiversity. Enoy the course!

Item 30 in Using Adobe RoboHelp 7 covers the changing of the font colour where the supplied colours are not what you want. The method there sticks when you regenerate the help. Chris wanted something different and did not mind a simple bit of behind the scenes swapping of files post production. Here's what he came up with, very nicely documented.

In whtopic.js (which you must save out separately to avoid it being overwritten on regen), there are two functions to be edited: AddMasterBreadcrumbs and GetMasterBreadcrumbs. In both cases, the variable that is modified is named strTrail. Here is how it looks in the default state:

AddMasterBreadcrumbs

var strTrail = "<a style=\""+ styleInfo + "\"" + " href=\"" + strHomePath + "\">" + strHome + "</a> " + separator + " ";

GetMasterBreadcrumbs

strTrail += "<a style=\""+ styleInfo + "\"" + " href=\"" + sHrefFullPath + "\">" + name + "</a> " + separator + " ";

To modify the breadcrumb style throughout the help system, change the HTML tag for style from <a> to <p>, and insert the <a> tag in front of the href instead, with >< brackets immediately preceding. Add in-line style elements as desired between the first two quotes in the style element. This must be identical in both functions. In the example below, I have changed the font to 8 point and the weight to bold:

AddMasterBreadcrumbs

var strTrail = "<p style=\"font-size:8pt; font-weight:Bold;"+ styleInfo + "\"" + "><a href=\"" + strHomePath + "\">" + strHome + "</a> " + separator + " ";

GetMasterBreadcrumbs

strTrail += "<p style=\"font-size:8pt; font-weight:Bold;"+ styleInfo + "\"" + "><a href=\"" + sHrefFullPath + "\">" + name + "</a> " + separator + " ";

That's all there is to it! Any other in-line style attributes, such as colors and font families, can be added in this fashion.

Nice one from Jeanne:

"I use this all the time

http://www.globalrendering.com/download.html

Its a free tool called Translator's Abacus and it can count words in any set of files."

See item 30 in Using RH7

For various reasons, sometimes you might want to exclude one or more topics from the search.

Here's how.

Sometimes you want to enter characters such as © or something more obscure such as ¶ or ∑ that are not in RoboHelp's symbols. Here's the easy way that accesses all the characters available on your PC, including unicode, provided you have some unicode fonts! Look for Arial Unicode MS.

Go to Start | Run and type in charmap. Locate what you want, click Select and click Copy, then paste it in.

Select the Advanced view and then Group By "Unicode SubRange". An additional dialog appears making it easier to find what you need.

Snippet updated 24 Mar 2008

This is one for RoboHelp for Word users. It is a sign that you have the wrong version of the templates installed and is seemingly easily fixed.

First look in the project folder and see if that contains a copy of RoboHelp.dot. That template should not be stored there but some people like to save a copy in the project. If you do find a copy there, it may be that it is from an earlier version of RoboHelp and the template versions are incompatible. Move the template outside the project and then open the project again. RH will look for the template that should be in Documents and Settings (Windows XP) or Users (Vista) and that should be compatible.

If you continue to get the problem, again close RoboHelp and locate the template in Documents and Settings (Windows XP) or Users (Vista) and move it to a temporary location. On reopening the project and without a copy of RoboHelp.dot in either of those locations or the project itself, RH will now take a copy from Program Files and that should fix the problem.

If you had customised the old template in any way, you can use Word's Style Organiser to reimport the styles from the copies you moved.

In the unlikely event you still get the error, you may also need to do the same with your Normal.dot template. I am told by a senior Adobe software engineer that this should not be necessary based on the way RoboHelp.dot works. However, one person at least found it did fix the problem so it may be that a factor outside Adobe's control can affect things. Not sure on that one and certainly you do not want to lose Normal.dot unless you absolutely have to. Again, keep a copy somewhere so that you can import styles and macros back in.

Here's what I was told.

"I guess RoboHelp_CSH.cls got replaced by RoboHelp_CSH.frm (used in VB projects) in X5."

If you do need RoboHelp_CSH.cls, click here to download it. Not something I have used so if it proves not to be what you needed, don't blame me! I am simply making the file available.

Ed Larrabee reported:

"Every time I try to do this the installation fails with a message that says the installer found a more current product installed, and hence will abort the installation. The problem is that I have no idea what this more current product is and how to remove it."

The Gunslinger came to the rescue:

"I have seen situations in which Adobe Reader caused an installation conflict.

Imagine that a user installs Adobe Acrobat 5 when it is released. Then, version 6 is released. The user sees no need to upgrade Acrobat but does install Reader 6. Version 7 is released. The user upgrades the Reader but not Acrobat. Version 8 is released. The user upgrades the Reader but not Acrobat. Later, the user is offered a copy of legimate upgrade of Acrobat 7. The user attempts to install it. The installer sees Reader 8 and halts the installation. (I suspect that the problem is related to Acrobat and Reader being developed from the same codebase long ago.)

On several occassions, I have encountered this issue and successfully resolved it by using the following method. Uninstall Reader; start with highest version number and work backward to lowest. Reboot. Uninstall Acrobat; start with highest version number and work backward to lowest. Reboot. Install Acrobat; install latest full version first, then install updates (start with lowest numbered update and work forward to highest). Reboot. Install Reader; install latest full version, then install updates (start with lowest numbered update and work forward to highest). Reboot.

This is a time-consuming process, but it has always worked for me."

Sometimes when you import a topic, RoboHelp reports that the topic, all images and other associated files have been imported but you cannot see the images in Project Manager. A check via Windows Explorer shows they are there but not according to Project Manager.

This is easily fixed. In Project Manager, create the folder using the name given in Windows Explorer. Not only will the folder be created, suddenly all the images will appear.

Techscribe found that RoboHelp's Multi-file Find and Replace Tool always opened topics in Word, even though that was not in his list of HTML editors in RoboHelp. The reason is quite simple. The tool uses whatever is set as Internet Explorer's HTML editor. Fixing that is easy, unless of course the IE dropdown does not include the editor you want to use. To fix that, visit http://windowsxp.mvps.org/htmleditor.htm. You need to download a small program. I cannot vouch for that but it did no harm on my PC, yours may be different.

Colum McAndrew posted this useful information to enable multi-line text fields to be formatted.

First off, genererate a single cell table and format the text (code snippet ) as required.

Next create a form containing a button and a multi-line text field.

In the <Head> section paste:

<script LANGUAGE=JavaScript
type="text/javascript">function copy2Clipboard(element)
{
element.select(); // Only works for text boxes.
textRange = document.selection.createRange();
textRange.execCommand("RemoveFormat");
textRange.execCommand("Copy");
}
</script>

Change the button properties to
Control Type = Plain Button
Button Caption = Copy to Clipboard
Control Identifier – Delete the default value to leave a blank field

Also add onclick="copy2Clipboard(namehere)" to the end of your <input type=submit value=Button> statement so that it reads
<input type=submit value=Button onclick="copy2Clipboard(namehere)">

Change the multi-line text field properties to
Control Identifier = namehere (where namehere is the value you specified above)
Initial text = Paste the code snippet to be copied to the PC clipboard.

Also add style="height: 1px; width: 0px;" to the end of the multi-line text area code.

Note: If the above style statement is set to style="height: 0px; width: 0px;"> a bug generates acres of blank space between the end of the multi-line text box and any other following content.

http://www.robo-forum.helpdesign.eu/index.php?c=1 (Robo-Forum)

http://www.robo-forum.de/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi (Archive)

A few RoboHelp users have encountered a dialog advising them that a .book folder has been created. I haven't seen this one but RoboWizard has and here's a thread with an answer.

Date Posted:

10/30/2007 11:05:13 PM

Posted By: FMnRH (Junior Member)

Hi,

After removing the "_" in between words in the Topic Title field of the Topic Properties dialog box, a "Notice" pop-up window appears stating the following:

Note that the 'book folder" C:\ (location of topic)\topic_name.book\, was created to hold the document and its resources.,

I click the OK box to close the Notice window. ,

I've never seen this message before when removing the underlines in the Topic title. Is this typical RH behavior or have I done something wrong to prompt this notice message to appear?,

Thanks,

FMnRH ,

Date Posted:

10/30/2007 11:13:48 PM

Posted By: RoboWizard (Senior Member)

Uhhh, what version of RoboHelp are you using? Is it 6 or the new 7? I ask because there is a very elusive issue that the development team at RoboHelp has never been able to replicate surrounding this quirk. Normally, it's been my experience that it has only happened with imported content. You import content from Word and make a change via the properties dialog. You probably found that after seeing the message, the topic made an odd whooshing sound as RoboHelp lost track of it and placed the red X on it indicating it has gone missing. ,

The easy fix is to right click the topic reference and choose the Properties again. Then choose the File tab. After you do this, choose the "Open Folder" icon. This gets you near where you need to be. Inside this folder you should find another folder. If your topic was initially named whatzit.htm, you should see a folder named whatzit.book. The topic will have been moved inside the folder. So to fix things, from inside Windows Explorer, drag the topic from the .book folder back to the folder containing the .book folder. Once you do this, RoboHelp will once again be aware of the topic and things should work better.,

Cheers... Rick,

Date Posted:

10/30/2007 11:51:39 PM

Posted By: FMnRH (Junior Member)

I did what you suggested (moving the .htm file back to the original folder) and another RoboHelp HTML pop-up window appeared:,

The reference to the file, "C:(location of project folder)\originalfolder.css", from the file "C:(location of original folder)\whatzit.htm" contains illegal...,

Couldn't see the rest of the message because the location of the files were so long (buried under many sub-folders) and I couldn't re-size the pop-up window to see the whole message.,

Any suggestions? Should I be concerned about the illegal (unknown) things?,

Thanks,,

FMnRH,

Date Posted:

10/31/2007 12:00:09 AM

Posted By: Captiv8r (Senior Member)

Hi again,

Normally what happens is that the topic loses its reference to the style sheet. You should be fine. Just re-attach the style sheet by clicking the little toolbar button. (Looks like a little notepad icon),

Cheers... Rick

Sheela worked out this method.

1. Name the cell(s) you want to refer to in the Excel sheet. Insert | Name | Define.
2. Create a link to the file (normal procedure in RoboHelp)
3. Go to the TrueCode tab and insert # and the name you gave as a suffix to the link. (It doesn't work if you attempt to do this in the hyperlink dialog.)
4. Save the topic as usual and check the link in Preview mode.

Sheela advises that RoboHelp will prompt to import the spreadsheet and that has to be done if the link is to work.

Try this link to Microsoft's site. It shows a Word 2003 screen. When you hover over a function, it tells you where to find it in Word 2007. If you find the change just too much, then look at Word 2007 Ribbon Customiser on my Links page.

This snippet was corrected on 24th November 2007.

If you have both versions on your PC, you will notice that when you change from one to the other, you get different messages. Word 2003 will tell you "Preparing to install..." while Word 2007 tells you it is "Configuring Office...".

Here's how to stop that if you are comfortable editing the registry and that does not contravene your company policies.

1. Create a system restore point
2. Open and close Word 2007.
3. Click Start | Run | Regedit
4. Navigate to to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software\Microsoft\Office \11.0\Word\Options
5. Right click in the right pane and create a new DWORD value.
6. Name this NoRereg [previously shown incorrectly as NoReg].
7. Double click it and give it a value of 1. (Decimal or hexadecimal doesn't matter).
8. Close Regedit

Open Word 2003 and it will open without the message. Open Word 2007 and it will open without the message.

If you double click DOC files in Windows Explorer this seems to be the behaviour:

• If neither version of Word is open, the document will open in Word 2007.
• If both versions of Word are open, the document will open in Word 2007.
• If only one version of Word is open, the document will open in that version.

Before generating printed documentation from the HTML versions of RoboHelp X5 or RoboHelp 6, you will need to change the value to 0 and open Word 2003 first.

RoboHelp for Word

I have not tested the revised instructions with RoboHelp for Word so check it works OK with that version.

People often ask whether or not it is necessary to publish all these files. In my opinion the short answer is Yes. In response to a recent forum thread on this subject Gravenstein posted:

The RoboHelp help topic "Output Files for WebHelp" states:
"...The output files located in !SSL!\WebHelp\whgdata are HTML data files used in Pure HTML versions of WebHelp."

"...The output files located in !SSL!\WebHelp\whdata are HTML/JavaScript data files used in DHTML versions of WebHelp running on earlier browsers (such as Internet Explorer 4.)"

"...The output files located in !SSL!\WebHelp\whxdata are XML data files used in Java applet and DHTML versions of WebHelp running on later browsers (such as Internet Explorer 5 and Netscape Navigator 6.)"

Reading that, it would seem like you could delete at least whdata (and maybe whgdata) if you knew your users were running on a late-model IE only. I haven't actually done any testing on this, but I have thought about it. Is there more to it than meets the eye?

Rick Stone (RoboWizard) has a page on his site devoted to this area. Click here.

Gravenstein indicated that in her project these files amounted to about 300mb. My take on that is:

We are talking about less than half a CD here and into freebie memory stick territory. Against the risk of breaking the help in some way that nobody can foresee until months later when this is forgotten, it doesn't seem worth even a vague thought. I take your point about what is in the help but there's always the risk that it was either never 100% correct or that program changes have rendered it incorrect. Such things happen in any organisation. New developers, new authors etc, I'm with MergeThis. It isn't worth the risk for the saving.

Sometimes the pressure to reduce the size of the help comes not so much from considerations of the server on which it will ultimately reside but on the media that will be used to deliver the application and the help. It can be as simple as trying not to go from CD to DVD or not going to one more CD or DVD than is already needed. Ask the developers if all their folders and files are needed. When they look horrified that anyone could be so stupid as to ask, just smile back.

In the early days of using RoboHelp, I encountered a problem when using the Preview option. The images on the page were upside down and reversed. If I sent the same page to another printer, it printed correctly. I called in the printer engineers after failing to find a solution. They stated that it was a print driver problem and referred to it the printer manufacturer. They confirmed they too thought it was a driver problem but I left the company before the issue was resolved.

Over the years a small but regular number of posts have appeared reporting the same problem.

Echopraxia responded to a recent post:

If you have PrimoPDF installed, I've seen that happen as well. It's a conflict with the Amyuni (print/conversion) driver.

I have used that program in the past and it is quite possible it was installed on the PC I was using. So if you have PrimoPDF installed, or any other PDF converter that use the Amyuni driver, you could try uninstalling it, maybe updating the printer driver, and then seeing if the problem goes away.

Amyuni are the producers of PDF Creator but they also allow their converter to be used on an open licence basis by anyone else. Thus the problem could also arise from any application on your PC that uses their driver.

Marguerite Quijas advised me that installing the templates that can be found by clicking this link solved the problem for her.

foo@bar reported

When opening the project, it can be 20-30 minutes before the program becomes usable. CPU usage is maxed out, while "Building file list" is displayed in the lower left. Using a file monitor utility, I can see that Robohelp is reading all files referenced in the project, and writing to the CPD file. This occurs on every opening of the project, and has been attempted on multiple machines & installations of RH6, so I'm certain it's something with the project itself.

Gravenstein replied

Try replacing the rhvariable.apj file ...

and later added that a malformed rhvariable.apj file had been giving her a problem and that copying one from another project had fixed the problem.

This would of course lose any variables set up but I suspect this problem is occurring in projects that don't have any set up.

One poster reported that it worked for them while another said it made no difference, however they had other problems as well.

Gravenstein pointed out that one of the sample projects had no such file and I know that opens OK without creating an rhvariable.apj file.

So on the face of it, a project with a good rhvariable.apj file will open OK as will a project with no rhvariable.apj. However, if there is something wrong with the file, it seems it can hinder the opening of the project.

The code of a blank file appears below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252"?>
<rhpml majorversion="1" minorversion="0">
<variables>
<variable>
<name>Placeholder</name>
<value>xxxx</value>
</variable>
</variables>
</rhpml>

The full post can be found here.

From time to time there are posts from people who are finding their project seems a bit slow and they have found the CPD file is has grown larger than they are used to seeing. Often people, myself included, will suggest deleting the CPD file and letting it rebuild. As you can see in my topic on Opening Projects, a few things get lost but they are easily fixed.

Sometimes if people have a copy of Microsoft Access, compacting the database is suggested. This is a standard procedure on any Microsoft Access database that users of that program will be familiar with. If you do go that route, bear in mind the CPD file (or its predecessor the MPJ file) are Access 97 databases.

Another option was brought to my attention by Dirk Bock, long time supporter of this forum. Microsoft provide a free tool that does the same job. It is known as Jetcomp and the link will take you to the download page. Do read the instructions and warnings.

That has the advantage that it will compact your database without any loss.

After taking a backup, change the file extension from CPD (or MPJ) to MDB, the normal Microsoft Access extension. After running the tool, change it back.

A few people encountered a problem where on importing into RoboHelp 6, it was creating a title which was the same as the file name and with underscores. In previous versions, the content of Heading 1 was used.

See this Adobe TechNote.

Vasont Systems have put a really straightforward explanation of Content Management on their site. It's the clearest explanation I have seen.

If you want to run your help or any other HTML file from a CD, here's a useful link to a free utility.

Click here to visit AutoRunPro and download the files. Note I am referring to AutoRunPro, not AutoHTML.

Click here to visit a useful page to help you set things up.

Click here to download a little demo that I have set up. Just run AutoRunPro.exe to see what will happen when you burn the files to a CD. Better still, copy the files to a CD and insert it.

A number of people have reported that since upgrading to RoboHelp 6, their links in webhelp to PDF files no longer work. It is in fact because they are generating with the Mark of the Web (MOW) option selected and that output is being placed on the server. The MOW is only intended to allow authors to view their work locally. It is not meant to be included in the final output. Mostly that does no harm but it will prevent links to baggage files from working.

A small number of people have reported getting this message when trying to delete topics. Initially the only solution was to create a new project and import all the topics and the contents of the HHK and HHC files. Topics could be deleted on another PC with RoboHelp installed but that did not solve the problem next time you want to delete something.

Eventually Doug Wood came to the rescue. His colleague Calvin Wilson ran into the problem and Doug used some tools to compare files in a project. He identified differences in the PSS file and that if you delete it RoboHelp rebuilds with no apparent issues. I have since had confirmation from Adobe that this is a file that can be deleted safely.

So just close your project, use Windows Explorer to delete the PSS file and then reopen your project. You will lose some information about when a Single Source Layout was last created but the problem will be solved.

In theory you should just need to add this line below your existing style sheet reference, using the name and path for your print style sheet.

<link href="print.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print">

I decided to try it and of course it is not quite that simple.

The first line below is how RH references the normal style sheet in the source. The second line I added in the true code view and I then immediately saved and generated, having added print.css to baggage first.

<link rel="StyleSheet" href="standard.css">
<link href="print.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print">

That worked but as soon as you switch to WYSIWYG, you see your topic with print.css applied! Not what you want.

Go back to true code and you will see RoboHelp has helpfully "corrected" your code. At that point it appears it cannot be made to work in the real world so I then tried working on the output instead.

I found the closing head tag </head> and inserted the reference to the style sheet to give

<link href="print.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print">
</head>

The good news is that worked in the simple example. Realistically though your topics are going to be in folders at different levels so some topics will require the path to the style sheet to be amended to ../print.css or ../../print.css etc. How to deal with that simply?

Do a multifile find and replace in several passes working on the output. I would use FAR from www.helpware.net. RoboHelp's own tool should work for this one but I never rely on that, just in case its limit to working on one line causes an issue.

PASS 1

Search for

<link rel="StyleSheet" href="standard.css">

and replace with

<link rel="StyleSheet" href="standard.css"><link href="print.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print">

PASS 2

Search for

<link rel="StyleSheet" href="../standard.css">

and replace with

<link rel="StyleSheet" href="../standard.css"><link href="../print.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print">

and so on.

It worked in my tests but do make sure you take a backup of your project before you do this.

The process will need to be repeated every time you generate and that introduces another wrinkle.

The search criteria above will find topics you have tweaked before as well as the new ones. If you used FAR, you could search once on

<link rel="StyleSheet" href="standard.css">

and delete all other topics from the list FAR generates.

Then search for

<link href="../print.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print">

and delete from the new list all the topics where that is found. Then you have a list of files where you need to do the find and replace to add the style sheet.

It sounds clunky but in reality when you have done it the first time, you will find it quite simple and quick, just so long as you are careful.

Snippet 68 describes a problem with projects generated using a build expression where a topic has merged cells in the last column of a table.

Another problem was reported on the RoboHelp forums about links to topics not in the project, including links to topics in a child project in a merged webhelp setup. Such links would work fine in a topic but not if the same path was used in the TOC. RoboHelp would refuse to generate the project with such a link in the TOC.

1. Click here to download a zip file that contains two replacement DLLs.
2. Close RoboHelp 6.
3. Locate BuildTagExpr.dll and MpjSingleSource.dll. You should find them in
   C:\Program Files\Adobe\RoboHelp 6.0\RoboHTML
4. Rename the existing files. I added ORIGINAL to the file extension.
5. Add the files from the zip file.
6. Open RoboHelp 6 and the projects should now compile.

Note that these files are as supplied by Adobe and I accept no liability for any harm that may be done to your project, computer, network or the universe. All I can say is that I have tried them on two PCs without any problems. If you do not accept that, please do not download the files. You can obtain them direct from Adobe Support if you prefer. Click this link.

After seeing a number of posts on various forums reporting the startpage#target method no longer works under IE7 I did some testing. What I found was if you open the help at the startpage and then add the hash and target details in the browser address bar, then the new page does not display, IE7 continues showing the original default page. This leads people to perceive that the method doesn't work.

It's not quite that simple though. It fails if you add the # and target details after calling the startpage normally but using hyperlinks the method worked for me and some others who have tested this.

1. Click this link.www.grainge.org/webcall/startpage.htm
2. When the default topic displays add
   #folder/target.htm
   to the end of the address bar.
   You will not be taken to the target topic as you would expect.
3. Now click this link and you will see the method does work.
   www.grainge.org/webcall/startpage.htm#folder/target.htm

So where your users will access target topics via links rather than typing into the address bar, the method is still good.

Also the method works when you use the startpage#target method as the first address you type in the address bar. It only fails for me when I add #target, not if I use it from the outset. Using forward slashes in the path avoids some problems.

It does seem however that calls from an application may not work. One poster reported "I've just gotten a confirmation from Adobe, that my issue with IE7 is a browser problem not a RH problem.  Apparently, other product help systems are affected and many reports have been sent to Microsoft to work the problem out."

Click here if you want to download the demo output and test it locally. Unzip to your C Drive to the default folder webcall. Double click the file TEST.HTM and follow the instructions there.

You apply a condition to a table in a topic and any tables after that one also disappear when the condition is invoked. Here's the workaround.

1. Remove the condition from the table.
2. Now select all the rows in the table but not the table itself.
   To do this start with the cursor in the top left cell and keeping it within the table borders, move the cursor down to the bottom right cell
   OR
   Follow Harvey Kabaker's tip and click inside the table, then go to the Table menu and choose Select | All Cells.
   

This applies the condition to all the cells but not the table itself.The result is the same in that the table is "removed" when the condition is used but this way, other tables will not affected.

UPDATE: A patch has been made available by Adobe that fixes this problem. See Snippet 71. Read this topic first to check that this is the problem you are encountering, then try the patch.

A report was posted of RoboHelp 6 crashing when using a conditional build expression in a topic that also had merged table cells. If the same topic was previewed or generated without the condition being used, all was well.

Harvey Kabaker discovered the problem arose only if the merged cells were vertical cells and only in the extreme right column. As soon as there was a merge between any other cells, the problem went away.

Using Harvey's discovery, I found that the solution was to add a column to the extreme right and apply a condition to it so that it was never in any output. That fulfilled the rule that the problem only arose if the merge was ONLY in the end column. With this extra column, RoboHelp no longer crashed. It also meant the table sized properly if you were using percentage widths so the user would not be aware of the fix.

This is the combination that caused RoboHelp 6 to crash.

• A topic has merged cells only in the right hand end column

AND

• A build expression is used when previewing or generating any output.

Note
The tag(s) in the build expression might not even be used in any topic in your project.
RoboHelp 6 would crash with the combination of ANY build expression AND just one topic with merged cells only in the end column somewhere in your project.

If you are not sure whether your topics have any merged cells, do a multi-file search using a tool such as FAR or BKReplaceEm. Search for <td_null>.

If a button is a hyperlink, then when the mouse hovers over it, the cursor becomes a hand. However, it will not automatically do that if the button is calling some javascript.

The HTML for the buttons at the top of the page by default would be along the lines

<p><img src="path/filename ....... </p>

and no hand would appear.

Amend that to

<p><span style="cursor:pointer"><img src="path/filename....... </span></p>

and you have your hand.

Click here.

Click here to see Adobe's Tech Note.

One poster wanted what they described as "a vertical layout in WebHelp similar to that offered in the vertical skins for FlashHelp". This means the TOC appears above the content. They found the solution below.

"I have found that the skn file in !SkinSubFolder! for the project contains two instances of frameset cols = "220,*": changing these to frameset rows = "220,*" seems to achieve the desired effect, and I have not yet found any glitches with the output (at least with IE6 as browser).

Philip was working on a RoboHelp project and generating a CHM output, only problem was the index tab was missing! After a lot of poking around Philip found the solution. All his keywords were in the topics. By telling RoboHelp to create future keywords in the HHK index file, adding a single index word and then switching the setting back to store keywords in topics, the problem went away. It seems you need at least one keyword in the HHK index file.

I don't personally produce merged CHM outputs, my main focus is merged webhelp. Try this link if you need information about merged CHM help.

If you have problems with the merged TOC, the following was posted by Pete Lees on the RoboHelp forum.

To merge the TOCs successfully, you need to use the TOC & Index Editor in FAR (http://helpware.net/FAR/index.html), an inexpensive shareware tool that is free to use for the first couple of months. Or you can edit your master contents file manually, in a text editor like Notepad, and then recompile the .chm file with HTML Help Workshop, as described here:
http://helpware.net/htmlhelp/how_to_merge.htm#Known%20Bugs

When selecting the Topic Preview (eyeglasses) toolbar button, pressing <Ctrl>+W, or selecting View > View (topic title), the preview window never appears.

This problem pops up from time to time and Amebr posted this elegant solution:

1. Click the View icon, so that the Preview is in focus.
2. Press Alt, Space, M
3. Press any arrow key, then waggle your mouse around. The window should snap from wherever it is hiding onto your cursor.
4. Click to put it down.

Prior to Amebr coming up with this, Rick Stone had posted the answer below which I am keeping on file, just in case. I don't trust those elves. One day they will break Amebr's solution and we may need this one again.

Rick's solution

[The references to "I" refer to Rick Stone. ]

I haven't a clue as to how this occurs, but I occasionally see posts about this in the forums. Somehow, the screen coordinates for the missing window have become set to your computer's equivalent of Jupiter. (I used to say "Pluto" here, but alas, they demoted the poor little guy from planet status) The window is indeed there. However, it's been moved off the visible area of the screen.

How to correct it

Close RoboHelp HTML.

You need to do this because the values we are about to change will be destructively changed once we close RoboHelp HTML and restart.

Open the Windows Registry Editor.
(All standard disclaimers apply. Back up the registry, sacrifice a chicken, yadda yadda yadda)

Locate the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\version\RoboHTML\version\MontereyFrame\

Double click the item labeled Preview in separate window and ensure the value is set to 1. If it already is, terrific. If not, change it to 1 and click the OK button. It doesn't matter if the option is set to Hex or Decimal.

Double click the item labeled PreviewMaximized and ensure the value is set to 0. If it already is, terrific. If not, change it to 0 and click the OK button. It doesn't matter if the option is set to Hex or Decimal.

Double click the item labeled PreviewWindowCX. Make sure the option is set to Decimal and set the value to 50. Then click the OK button.

Double click the item labeled PreviewWindowCY. Make sure the option is set to Decimal and set the value to 50. Then click the OK button.

Double click the item labeled PreviewWindowX. Make sure the option is set to Decimal and set the value to 50. Then click the OK button.

Double click the item labeled PreviewWindowY. Make sure the option is set to Decimal and set the value to 50. Then click the OK button.

Close the Windows Registry Editor.

Restart RoboHelp HTML and preview a topic.

The window should now be floating above the RoboHelp HTML application in full view.

Dual Monitors

Also Duke Hillard emailed me to advise "I have one possible cause: changing monitors. I went from dual monitors (17-inch) to a single monitor (22-inch). After the transition, my Preview Window was missing. After reading your snippet, I went to “regedit”. I found that the values for size of the Preview Window were normal but that the values for the location of the Preview Window were too large for my existing monitor (i.e., the Preview was being placed into a space on a second monitor that no longer existed). Along that same line of thought, a second possible cause for the Preview to disappear is a RoboHelp user accidentally invoking Windows shortcut keys to move a window and accidentally moving the window far off their monitor."

The link below gives instructions on getting RoboHelp 6 to run under Vista. Please note the warnings and that you will not be eligible for Technical Support. Basically, if it all goes pear shaped, you are on your own for running RoboHelp under an operating system for which it was not designed.

http://www.adobe.com/go/kb400360.

In this post, one of Adobe's own people reported his own findings adding:

"Please note that Adobe Technical support may not be able to resolve Windows Vista related issues on both x5 and 6. We do strongly encourage users to report issues that they are seeing in these environments."

This is a common complaint but it is one not restricted to RoboHelp. There are many HTML editors that lose the formatting when you paste something from Word or other applications

If you have Dreamweaver 8 (or perhaps earlier versions) then you can paste into that and then lift the code from there and paste it into RoboHelp's true code view. If you don't have Dreamweaver, you could try NVU which is free and will do the same thing.

Be careful with tables though as RoboHelp's WYSIWYG editor writes the tables in a different way in the source files to most editors.

Tyler Waters lost one of his toolbars and decided to attack the registry. Unfortunately it bit back and initially he lost all his toolbars. Rick Stone advised that sometimes a toolbar goes missing, often when moving it around, and that it usually involves a trip to the registry. However, given that all the toolbars had gone missing, he advised uninstalling and reinstalling RoboHelp first.

Unfortunately that did not work for Tyler. Now it may be that Tyler's uninstall did not include the registry changes covered in my topic on installing RoboHelp and it may that method followed by Rick's suggestion would have worked. We'll never know as Tyler decided to investigate what was in the registry a bit further and spotted the problem. He has kindly written that up and the rest of this snippet is Tyler's work. Many thanks Tyler.

****************************************

First off, the instructions in this snippet include messing with the registry. It is recommended that whenever you mess with the registry to try and fix something that's broken, you should ALWAYS make a backup first in case you mess it up even further.

The registry folder with all the toolbar keys is located here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\eHelp\RoboHTML\13.00\Components\4\

Within this folder there are keys that control where the toolbars reside and how they are docked:
ToolBarDockID[X]
ToolBarDockIdealRectCX[X]
ToolBarDockIdealRectCY[X]
ToolBarDockIdealRectX[X]
ToolBarDockIdealRectY[X]
ToolBarDockRectCX[X]
ToolBarDockRectCY[X]
ToolBarDockRectX[X]
ToolBarDockRectY[X]
ToolBarFloating[X]
ToolBarFloatingWidth[X]
ToolBarFloatingX[X]
ToolBarFloatingY[X]
ToolBarVisible[X]

There are 5 sets of these keys, one for each toolbar Where x=
1 - Formatting
2 - Objects
3 - Tables & Borders
4 - Positioning
5 - View

With that said, the instructions:

1. Ensure RoboHelp is CLOSED.
2. Open up regedit.exe
3. Navigate to the following directory:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\eHelp\RoboHTML\13.00\Components\4\
4. Identify the toolbar that is missing... where [X] is the missing toolbar (see X values above)
   Change ToolbarVisible[X] to 1
   Change ToolbarFloating[X] to 1
   Change ToolbarFloatingX[X] to 200
   Change ToolbarFloatingY[X] to 200
5. Open up RoboHelp. The toolbar's new position will be determined by the modified registry values. You should see that at about 200 left, 200 top, the missing toolbars are found! Move them around, dock them. Ensure you can see them.
6. Close RoboHelp. This will save the registry values and the problem should be fixed.

Two posters found their webhelp worked fine everywhere except on the server when the TOC failed to load.

Jonathan Woodward reported, "We finally tracked it down to the security settings on the webserver where the application and OLH files resided. The webserver was blocking use of .xml, .js, and a few other important file types, thus causing the TOC to not load properly when accessed from the application."

Jennifer Foster reported, "The problem was that IIS 6 doesn't serve unregistered MIME types. For some reason, .js was not registered in IIS. To fix this, I just allowed all unregistered MIME types but doing an * as the extension and putting them as application/octet-stream. A better solution, though, would probably be to just register the .js file extension."

Various reports have appeared on the RoboHelp for Word forum of a list of fonts being displayed before the topic heading when generating CHM help. This is thought to result from the patch referred to in Snippet 51 which relates to winhelp. However, we cannot be certain.

Minchou reported "I found a kludge that solves my problem in the short term: Insert a manual page break before the first topic in the document."

Simple but effective!

This crops up occasionally and I have never got to the bottom of it. Some say it is because one of the files or folders has become marked Read Only but when I checked my target, that was not the case.

Fortunately fixing the problem is usually straightforward. The quickest way is to rename the target folder and publish again using the original name, or publish to a new target folder with a different name. After that you can trash the original and rename the new folder.

HTML editors do not have the ability to convert text to a table in the same way as Microsoft Word. Andy R came up with a neat solution though.

***

You can use a program such as textpad (or any text editor) to perform a search and replace of the tab (or other delimiter) character with </td><td>

Search and replace the line break character "/n" with "</td></tr>/n<tr><td>"

Then all you need to do is wrap the table with <table> tags and a little cleaning up.

Sara Writer posted:

In my earlier project I produced several different chm files which all behaved the same when searching from the Search tab. When searching for say 'beam' it also found 'beams' and 'beaming'. Now I have two new projects and they will only perform a simple search; i.e. 'beam' will only find 'beam' and 'beams' will only find 'beams'.

Pete Lees responded with this:

You may need to check the language setting for each help file as only US English files support "stemmed" searches of the type that you described.

As I understand it, you can't set the language of an HTML Help file from within RoboHelp. Instead, you must open the project (.hhp) file in Notepad or HTML Help Workshop and add a line like this to the [OPTIONS] section:

Language=0x409 English (United States)

Hot on the heels of Snippet 51 which covers a Word 2003 problem with Microsoft Patch KB 917334, a problem has been found with Microsoft Patch KB917335 which is the equivalent patch for Word 2002 (Word XP).

What happens here is that topic titles get random prefixes such as placeCity, State and stockticker. They appear to be removed when changed manually but reopen the project and they are still there. You may also get a report of an unregistered routine followed by an option to let RoboHelp make the necessary updates. It is thought the best policy here may be to answer No.

As yet there is no solution apart from the obvious one of upgrading to Word 2003 where the problem has been fixed. Meantime here are some solutions posted for this issue and some that were for the wrong font issue but may also work for this one.

Solution 1

Karen R reported in the RoboHelp forum on Adobe's site:

In Word, navigate to the following: Tools | Auto Correct Options | Smart Tags - uncheck the Smart tag lists Recognizers box, then click the Remove Smart Tags button. This resolved the problem for my projects. I hope this helps you! I'm now trying to research the "PlaceName" and "Place Type" issue.

PegBrad reported that Karen's solution solved the whole problem for her.

Solution 2

You could uninstall KB917334 and turn off Automatic Updates to prevent if being applied again. I cannot advise you to turn off Automatic Updates. That is a decision for you to make in conjunction with your IT department where applicable. Also bear in mind that one person reported that uninstalling KB917334 (the Word 2003 equivalent patch) causes problems with the desktop.

Solution 3

The patch installs a new version of winword.exe and uninstalling the patch reinstalls the old version that did not have this issue. So the trick is:

1. Uninstall the patch.
2. Make a copy of Winword.exe and rename it (I suggest "Winword_original.exe") for future use. This is of course the version before the trouble started.
3. Reinstall the patch so that your security updates are correct and you do not get nagged to apply this patch.
4. Make a copy of Winword.exe and rename it (I suggest "Winword_update.exe") for future use. Leave all three Winword files in the "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11" directory for easy access.
5. Two options now:

• For those who are not bothered by the security risks: Delete Winword.exe, make a copy of "Winword_Original.exe", and rename it to "Winword.exe". This will mean that everything you do in Word will be based on the old version so you are vulnerable to the risks that the patch removes.
• For those who need the security updates: Delete Winword.exe, make a copy of "Winword_Original.exe", and rename it to "Winword.exe" whenever you want to work with RoboHelp. After working with RoboHelp, delete Winword.exe, make a copy of "Winword_Update.exe", and rename it to "Winword.exe". This places the security update version back in service so you are not at risk while doing other work. You will know which one is being used by comparing the File Sizes and Date Modified since they are different.

Let me emphasise that you must ONLY adopt this approach with the agreement of your line management and IT Support. I cannot say whether there will be other side effects, only that it has worked OK for Steve Harley. This solution, like all the others, is entirely at your risk.

KB923094
The findings of MS Caroline referred to above suggest that as Steve Harley had predicted, future patches will contain the same fix as was in KB917334/5 and reintroduce the problem. If that is the case, then Steve's solution of sticking with an old version of Winword will be the solution but it's one many system administrators will not like given that it removes the security the patch is designed to give. In Steve's case, his company took the view that he is one of a small number of users who would need to work this way and subject to Steve and his co-authors being sensible about what documents they opened, the company was willing to accept that risk. You need to check with your IT guys whether or not they share that view.

From June 2006, posts started to appear reporting that RoboHelp for Word was suffering from the installation of Microsoft Patch KB917334 which is for Word 2003. When generating winhelp, instead of text appearing in Arial, it was displayed in Times New Roman.

There was a lengthy Snippet here with many suggested workarounds but I am very pleased to now be able to report that Adobe have released a patch.

I am pleased to report that both because it fixes the problem and because it is the first patch we have seen in a long time. It evidences Adobe's commitment to this product.

Click here for the patch.

A couple of people found the patch did not work and here are their solutions.

David Hurlston
Word sets the Heading styles to be based on Normal. We found that removing that link worked for David on his PC. Same project on my PC, the patch worked.

ImCarol
Great News is that I found a really weird work around. I change all the Verdana to MS Mincho, save to rtf, change to Verdana again. The *.hlp is perfect!!! PS, in all the fonts I tried, MS Mincho is the only one works.

If you want to have unordered lists with various levels of indent with different bullets for each level, this is what you do. I recommend trying it in a fresh topic and preferably a test project.

First amend your style sheet so that your UL definition includes the bullet you want for the first level, for example:

UL {
font-size:10pt;
margin-top:0pt;
margin-bottom:0pt;
font-family:Verdana, sans-serif;
list-style: disc }

Now copy and paste that, then add a second UL. Change the style to what you want for the second level.
UL UL {
font-size:10pt;
margin-top:0pt;
margin-bottom:0pt;
font-family:Verdana, sans-serif;
list-style: circle }

Now copy and paste that, then add a third UL. Change the style to what you want for the third level.
UL UL UL{
font-size:10pt;
/*margin-left:0.25in; */
margin-top:0pt;
margin-bottom:0pt;
font-family:Verdana, sans-serif;
list-style: square }

Now create a list using RoboHelp's bullet icon with three lines with the text List Item.

Place the cursor in the second item and click the indent icon once.

Place the cursor in the third item and click the indent icon twice.

The code will look like this. (I have removed the indenting and blank lines to save space.)

<ul style="list-style: disc;" type=disc>
<li class=kadov-p><p>List item</p></li>
<ul style="list-style: disc;" type=disc>
<li class=kadov-p><p>List item</p></li>
<ul style="list-style: disc;" type=disc>
<li class=kadov-p><p>List item</p></li>
</ul>
</ul>
</ul>

Remove the style definition in the tags so that the code looks like this:

<ul>
<li class=kadov-p><p>List item</p></li>
<ul>
<li class=kadov-p><p>List item</p></li>
<ul>
<li class=kadov-p><p>List item</p></li>
</ul>
</ul>
</ul>

In RoboHelp's WYSIWYG viewer there will be no change but in Preview and the generated output, you will get the different bullets.

If your bullet points are within numbered points, then you may find style="list-style: disc;" type=disc is written within the <li> tag but you remove it from there in the same way.

You can also use this method to define different numbering styles such as 1 followed by a followed by i. Just amend your style sheet in the same way using OL, OL OL and OL OL OL.

Leon advised in one post:

You might find RH being too helpful so that when you decide to nest a list, RH says to itself: "My master wants to end this list and start another, so I'll end it for him. He'll be soooooo happy!

So, you get these extra tags (shown in bold):
<OL> <LI> <LI> </OL> <OL> <LI> <LI> <LI> </OL> <OL> <LI> <LI> <LI> </OL>

instead of this truly nested list whose outer list will resume numbering from when it was interrupted, not ended:
<OL> <LI> <LI> <OL> <LI> <LI> <LI> </OL> <LI> <LI> <LI> </OL>

IF
- Your TOC is set to autosynchronise
- A book in your TOC has a long list of topics
- A user clicks a link to a topic that is well down the list
- Their browser is IE
THEN
The topic will be highlighted in the TOC but the TOC entry will not be displayed. The user will see the book and as many topics as can be shown below that but the highlighted topic will be further down and they will need to scroll to see it. The problem does not arise with Firefox.

Ajay Kumar posted this solution

Go to the output folder and open "whthost.js".
In that remove or comment out the line
"document.body.scrollTop=nNewScroll;"
It will be some around line 734.
To comment out a line, prefix it with two forward slashes.

The solution works just fine in IE but the downside is that it breaks things in Firefox! With the line removed or commented out, in Firefox the highlighting is removed from the previously highlighted topic but it does not move to the correct topic.

So it's a great solution if you know your users are IE only but you may be better off leaving things untouched if you have no control over the browser used or know it will be Firefox.

The good news is the problem is fixed in IE7.

If you are having problems getting your TOC to synchronise generally, take a look at Snippet 1.

In connection with topic reviews, the question was posed as to whether hidden text could be inserted into HTML other than via the comments tag.

Quite simply you add style="display: none;" to a tag so that it appears something like the html below:

<p style="display: none;">Hello World</p>

OR

<p>This is some <span style="display: none;">red</span>text.</p>

The text will not be seen nor will there be an empty line or space.

To reveal the text you would have to do a global find and replace changing the style to something visible that you do not use anywhere else. You would search on

style="display: none;"

and replace it with something like

style="color: red"

All the hidden text would be revealed and display red.

The replace needs to be unique so that you can do a reverse find and replace.

The html was suggested by Mike Feimster in connection with another use, namely getting words into a topic so that they would be found by a search even though they are not part of the topic text. Be aware that regardless of why you use this method, if style="display: none;" is in your generated help, the text will be caught by the search function.

Some might argue this will confuse users doing a search as the topic will be offered up but the user will not be able to find the word. That's true so it depends on who your users are and whether this is explained to them.

Rick Stone aka RoboWizard advises that the old eHelp Knowledge Base can be accessed by following this link. I understand it can be difficult to find what you are looking for but that it can be found.

Two problems typically arise.

The style sheet definitions are lost.

To avoid that problem you need a copy of the stylesheet in each folder. Make sure your topics point to the style sheet in the same folder as the topic and they will then print correctly when the user selects "Print all topics in book", even though the topics may be coming from different folders.

Download this RoboHelp project if you want to prove it works.

Table borders do not print correctly.

A fairly common problem is that table borders do not print correctly when printing a topic from a CHM file. In fact the problem only arises when you select the option to print all topics in a book, rather than just the displayed topic. The problem is that the Microsoft help viewer cannot deal with the way RoboHelp writes the code for tables. Why it can deal with it from a single topic and not multiple topics, I cannot tell you. The appearance of styles generally can get messed up when printing all topics in a book but that can be resolved. Unfortunately the method does not fix table borders.

The only thing that I found that worked was to create the topics in Dreamweaver or some other editor. However, that works only so long as the topic is not opened in the RoboHelp editor. As soon as it is, the problem is back, even if you do not touch the table.

The advice from Macromedia on this was between 75 and 100 topics and I am not aware of any changes made since Adobe took over that would change this.

Dan posted this link in response to a RoboHelp forum question. The answer will work in any HTML page. Also see Tables on this site where I describe the method in detail and another method.

This problem often crops up on the RoboHelp forum. It is covered in this topic and now includes a useful workaround advised by Dan Deming.

To quote Dave Mozealous at Macromedia, "this one is bizarre". The cause is not known and it is nothing to do with file associations in Windows Explorer. A file giving this problem on one machine will work fine on another.

Solutions that have worked are:

• Open a RoboHelp for Word project. Yes we know that has nothing to do with an XPJ file but it has fixed it for a number of people. The reason is not known.

• Uninstall X5, reinstall X4, uninstall X4 and reinstall X5. The reason is not known.

• Getting your IT people to give you a new profile. Bear in mind though that you will have to uninstall RoboHelp and then reinstall it using the new profile. Also you will lose your settings in the applications you use.

Finally two posters found the cause was having an application known as JMPS (Joint Mission Planning System) on the same PC as RoboHelp. Here's what one of them posted:

"I talked with a subcontractor who uses RoboHELP X3, about 3 years ago they had an intermittent problem where RoboHELP files were being corrupted. They tracked it down to JMPS wanting control over Microsoft Word for Report Generation and RoboHELP wanted control over Word to produce RTF files. Again the problem was only intermittent. They moved help generation to a non-JMPS machine to avoid the problem entirely."

Do you want to highlight table rows as the cursor moves over the rows as in the table below?

Note that this will only work in Internet Explorer or a compiled CHM file.

When a table is created, the code for each row will be

<tr valign=top>

Amend it to

<tr onMouseOver="this.bgColor='rgb(210, 220, 240)'"

onMouseOut="this.bgColor='rgb(255, 255, 255)'"

valign=top>

Change the first RGB value to the colour you want for the highlighting.

Change the second RGB value to the colour of your background.

That's it. You will only see the highlighting in preview or the compiled help, not in RoboHelp's WYSIWYG editor.

Click here to find out how to create an email with a link to a topic.

This error can occur when the regional default setting on the computer is not English. See this topic on Macromedia's site for the solution.

If you get this error, here's what Jolantru posted to the forum.

"After two days of jumping thru hoops, about 10 phone calls and going to 3rd level support, MM FINALLY found a solution. Seems the Robo suite of apps (this problem does not occur with MM-grown s/w like AUthorware) are susceptible to anti-spyware. My company runs WebRoot, and THAT was preventing the installer from running correctly. My system administrator had to go to the server and uninstall this s/w (apparently you can't do it from your PC), then we re-ran the installer and RoboOffice X5 worked just fine. BTW, I tried another Robo app (RoboInfo) and got the SAME error - but NOT with Authorware. MS Anti-spyware doesn't seem to have the same effect that WebRoot does."

How to change the colour of the dropdown and expanding text hotspots, as well as the text itself, is explained in this downloadable project.

Use Winzip's extract tool to retain the structure and then go to the !SSL! folder and open the two chm files you will find. These show the same topic but with different colours because of differences in the style sheet..

The RoboHelp project is supplied so that you can experiment with your own changes.

Ignore the topic on hyperlinks. That is incomplete at the moment.

It was suggested in a RoboHelp forum posting that printed documentation is outdated and that only online help is required. Here's my response.

****************************************

The correct media depends partly on the content and partly on the users. Has anyone asked your users rather than being prescriptive?

On content, if all the topics are short and easily digested, then online help only can be considered. If they are longer topics, and particularly if the content is complex, then it can be difficult to digest properly on screen. You can argue that any topic can be printed but sometimes you have users who want to improve their product knowledge and that is more easily done by scanning a printed manual and homing in on relevant stuff.

On users, there will always be people who prefer to work from the printed media. For a start they can annotate it. Don't make the mistake that these are older people. I find many younger people prefer this media, again with complex subject matter.

Nonetheless, you could avoid the cost of sending the document to a print-house. What we do is PDF it and ship the PDF as well as the online help. For users who want the online help, they still have it. For users and situations where printed media is preferred, they can print the PDF version in its entirety or in part. You avoid the cost but the customer can still have their printed version.

I think the key is to let the user decide. Horses for courses.

When I rebuilt my machine with Windows XP SP2 I kept getting an error message. The problem was that it could not find the file empty.htm in the path below. Note that empty.pdf is a folder name!

C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\1-Step RoboPDF\empty.pdf

Thus the full path required was

C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\1-Step RoboPDF\empty.pdf\empty.htm.

What I found existed was

C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\1-Step RoboPDF\empty.htm

where empty.htm was a file.

Rick had seen this reported on the RoboPDF forum and advised that what you have to do is create the folder empty.pdf off of the 1-Step RoboPDF folder, then move any files in 1-Step RoboPDF into the new folder.

Using 8.3 format for a folder name is not the smartest piece of naming I have seen and you will probably need to reread this topic. Trust me, the path below where empty.pdf is a folder and empty.htm is a file does correct the problem.

C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\1-Step RoboPDF\empty.pdf\empty.htm

Click here to find out.

I cannot really tell you what you will see as that will depend on the browser you are using, the version of that browser and the patches that have been installed.

It is unlikely that you will be able to open the file just by clicking the link. Typically you will be given the opportunity to Open the file or Save it. In reality, if you select Open, the file still has to download but it is then opened from a temporary directory. Some browswers will force you to save the file first.

Either way, it is time consuming and the Security Warning message can be intimidating for some users.

Unless you can contemplate making registry changes which compromise security, a chm file is now effectively limited to being run from the user's hard disk. For anything else you need webhelp.

RH allows you to add a tooltip over images by filling in the Screen Tip field in the insert images dialog. Perhaps you want to add a tooltip somewhere else, maybe over a paragraph? Hold your mouse over this paragraph. It's as simple as the html below.

<P><acronym title="Your tooltip">Your paragraph of text.</acronym></p>

If you want something more sophisticated, Leon Descoteaux recommended Walter Zorn's really neat solution.

Adobe RoboHelp 7 introduced the option of not having an About logo in the output. Prior to that it was a manual process. Rick Stone's Skinny on Skins is THE authority on this subject with various options for removing the logo, changing the logo to your own, editing the text it displays if clicked and removing the RoboHelp credit. Each of the methods is project specific so you can vary each project as required.

James Lockard never uses a logo, the RoboHelp one or his own company's so he wanted something where the logo did not even appear in a new project. Here are his instructions.

1. Locate your webhelp "template_skin" directory. Mine was at C:\Program Files\RoboHelp Office\RoboHTML\WebHelp5Ext\template_skin.

2. Find the whtbar.js file and make a backup copy somewhere.

3. Open whtbar.js with Notepad.

4. Find the code block in the addButton function (not addBanner) that starts with
   else if(sType=="banner")
   This appears at the end of the addButton function and just before the isShowHideEnable function on my system.

5. Comment out the line in that block that reads
   addBanner(sI1);
   To comment out the line just type
   //
   at the start of the line. This prevents the addBanner function from running, but leaves everything else intact.

6. If you've got RoboHelp running you'll need to exit and restart the program for the changes to take effect.

It doesn't remove the logo from existing projects but you'll never see it in a new one unless you reverse the procedure.

Many authors have experienced problems getting their links to appear as defined in their style sheet. Thanks to Leon Descoteaux for posting this useful snippet.

Make sure that the links are arranged in the following order inside your style sheet, including any link classes you might be using, such as plain and fancy:

A:link

A:visited

A.plain:link

A.plain:visited

A.plain:hover

A.fancy:link

A.fancy:visited

A.fancy:hover

A frequent problem for authors is that they have a version of Word which is later than their version of RoboHelp will support. Typically an IT department will roll out Word 2003 to the whole company but the technical author's version of RoboHelp does not support it.

When X5 was introduced, it was not compatible with Word 2003. That only came when Service Pack 1 was rolled out. Prior to that, eHelp indicated the solution was to install Word 2002 (XP) or earlier as well as Word 2003. This would also work for users of X3 and X4 which is only compatible with Word 2002 or earlier. Subsequently the solution was pulled and I had some doubts about it based on a bad experience with a dual install of Word. I must add that Microsoft also caution against a dual install.

Sandra has reported that the whole trick is the order in which the products are installed and it is not what you would expect. Normally you install earlier versions first and then the later ones. The trick here is to install Word 2003 first, then Word 2002 or your earlier version and finally RoboHelp.

Sandra has also reported that she has not had any problems with Word as a result.

You do of course need to make sure your licences cover both versions of Word.

This is a different method to the one here before 21 Aug 2007. It does not require the user to click in the topic frame before printing.

Go to Skin editor and click the + sign to add a new button.

In the Text tab enter Print as the Item Name and complete the Text and Image options as required.

Now click the Action tab.

In the Action frame go to the OnClick field and enter

printAction()

In the JavaScript frame click the Inline JavaScript option and then the edit button.

In the window that opens enter

var printAction = function()
{
var topicPane = top.frames[1].frames[1];
topicPane.focus();
topicPane.print();
}

OK your way back out and generate the help. Don't forget to tick the Print button in the second page of the wizard.

The nice bit about this script is that the user does not have to click the topic frame before printing.

ChinoSotto was unable to import a Word document into his project, Word just kept hanging. The solution turned out to be very simple. Click here for the Macromedia technote.

Update 05/05/07: I have found the link is pointing to a page that no longer exists. A search on Adobe's site using "hangs on import" gives a list of topics and the required one is the first in the list. Trouble is that clicking that link also report the page does not exist. Quite how the search finds it then is interesting and I have asked Adobe to investigate.

From time to time people ask how to open a Word document from the help.

COMPILED CHM HELP

Rick advises that you can use an HTML Help Shortcut control to accomplish the goal. You simply specify the file name where you would normally specify the application.

WEBHELP

There is a way of forcing a Word document to open in Word rather than Internet Explorer but HEED THIS WARNING.

It requires changes to each users PC and many systems administrators will not permit those changes for very sound reasons. You may be placing documents on an intranet and know they are safe. However, the changes will affect ANY link to a Word document. If one of your users finds a Word document on another site and clicks the link, it could introduce all sorts of nasties onto your corporate network. There are many websites to help you find a new job!

Still determined? OK. On each users PC you need to go to Windows Explorer | Tools | Folder Options | File Types. Locate the DOC extension and click on Advanced. Clear the Confirm Open after Download check box. Next time you click the link, the document will open in Word. Depending on the location of the document and permissions, it may not be possible to use Save to save changes but the user can click Save As and save it locally.

Any Gotchas? Yes. If Internet Explorer is not your browser, some browsers will not let you open a Word document at any price.

The link below is to a Word document. Fancy clicking it to test those settings changes? Do back up all your RoboHelp projects first as it has a macro to delete them all. OK I would not do that and the document is safe but I suspect the point has been made. If you want to test how a document opens on your PC, it is OK to click the link below.

Click to open a Word document

Word has a skip numbering feature which used to be part of RoboHelp but somewhere along the line it was helpfully removed! For some users, creating an unnumbered (or unbulleted) list paragraph can be as simple as inserting a line break using Shift + Enter. However, your style sheet definitions may result in the different spacing between paragraphs created using that method and paragraphs with a number or bullet applied. See below and note that while the number is skipped, the spacing is wrong. A second line would also be wrong.

**************************************

1. First item.
   Another paragraph part of first item.

2. Line created using Enter.

**************************************

Matt Zim found a neat way around that. He applies the number or bullet to the first paragraph and then lets RoboHelp apply numbering or bullets to every paragraph until he has finished editing.

Thus he would create his list as

**************************************

1. First item.

2. Another paragraph part of first item.

3. Second item.

**************************************

In true code those three lines will appear as

<li><p>First item.</p></li>

<li><p>Another paragraph part of first item.</p></li>

<li><p>Second item.</p></li>

Note how each paragraph is surrounded by <li> tags. Matt simply removes the <li> tags from the paragraphs he does not want numbered. The indentation remains correct and the numbering adjusts itself. I have removed those tags in the example and this is what you get. Perfect.

**************************************

1. First item.

Another paragraph part of first item.

2. Second item.

Whenever you create a new project, you just get the standard colours when you click Format | Colors.

In RoboHelp X5, the colours are defined in the file rhcolor.apj. Once you have the colours you want in one project, you can copy that file to other projects.

You might want to keep variants like rhcolor01.apj, rhcolor02.apj etc. Just rename the one you want and copy it into a project.

You can also edit the file. Open it in a text editor and create a new section. It will be obvious what you need to do.

If webhelp is installed onto a local machine rather than accessed via a server, then the Internet Explorer security settings may prevent the help from being accessed.

Click here to access the Adobe topic on the subject. That topic also has a link to the Microsoft topic on the IE information bar introduced in SP2.

In short, either the user must allow the content each time the webhelp is accessed or they must lower their security settings, which needless to say Microsoft do not recommend. (In IE, Tools | Options | Advanced | Security | Tick "Allow active content to run in files on My Computer".)

This is only an issue with locally installed help, not server based help. It is understood from feedback that terminal servers and Citrix may treat webhelp as if it were installed locally.

Another workaround is to deliver the help as FlashHelp. Provided you have RoboHelp X5 Service Pack 2 installed, that allows FlashHelp to run locally without this problem. Note the following:

• End users will need Macromedia Flash Player 6.0 or higher installed.

• You cannot edit FlashHelp skins.

• You can still remove the Powered By logo as described in Rick Stone's Skinny on Skins.

Thanks to Susan Neal for advising me of the FlashHelp workaround and to Rick Stone for his input on it and indeed on this issue generally.