Outputs General

Having created your topics, set up a Table of Contents, an Index, a Glossary and applied condition tags to exclude certain topics and / or content you are ready to generate one or more of the outputs. Let's summarise the options.

 The default location for generating projects was always within the !SSL! folder. Sometimes though users got it wrong and generated to the root of their project thereby trashing all their source files. Some did not have a backup! To prevent this, Adobe RoboHelp blocks generating to within the project files.
Instead, within My RoboHelp Projects there is now an "outputs" folder. You can change the default in any output to your preferred location.

 

You may encounter issues with frameless and responsive outputs when viewed in Internet Explorer. CSS3 and advanced HTML5 features are used in the new UI versions of RoboHelp and these are not supported in IE8. Whilst some compatibility with IE11 has been added, some features may still not work. Chrome, Edge and Firefox are recommended.

The Output Types

Type

About

eBook

If you create eBooks, you can use  Adobe RoboHelp as your editor and easily generate the topics in eBook format.

Chatbot

The Chatbot preset allows you to generate content for integration with your chosen chatbot engine.

Content Only

This output generates only the topic content in XHTML format without any skins.

Frameless

Responsive HTML5 outputs still relied on frames for their structure. Frames have become less popular and this new output has skins that have no frames, it's all done with DIV tags.

Knowledge Base

The supported knowledge bases are Atlassian Confluence, Adobe Enterprise Manager, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Zendesk and Zoho.

MicroHelp

The MicroHelp preset allows you to generate your MicroContent in various formats.

Microsoft HTML - CHMs

Notwithstanding its age, this format refuses to die. It is still popular where the help has to accessible offline and contained in a single file.

 The WebHelp to CHM Converter script is not included in Adobe RoboHelp.

PDF

In Classic versions, the PDF format generated a Word document behind the scenes and converted that to PDF format. Now the PDF file will be created directly. You no longer need Microsoft Word installed.

Also see Templates in Related Topics below.

Responsive HTML5

Responsive HTML5 outputs have proved very popular as without any real work by the author, the layout adapts to the user's screen, be that a computer, a tablet or a smartphone. All the author has to do is customise the layout if required.

Dynamic Content Filtering allows the author to set various filters so that the user sees just topics and content applicable to the user's choices.

The frameless output offers more customisation options and is where future development will focus. If you are not already using a responsive output, then frameless is a better option. Changing from a responsive to a frameless output will need changes to context sensitive help if you use URLs rather than Map IDs. 

Word

You no longer need Microsoft Word installed. The DOCX file created can be read in any program that can read a DOCX file.

Also see Templates in Related Topics below.

 Related Topics

Type

About

Calling Context Sensitive Help

The calls required for context sensitive help.

Command Line Generation

How to generate your output from the command line.

Dynamic Content Filtering

Allows users to filter out content not relevant to the role or task.

Mapping

How to create Map IDs for context sensitive help.

Publishing

How to publish your generated output to a web server.

Templates

Describes the templates used for all outputs. Templates were previously known as skins.

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