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Importing "related topics" button from Word

Mar 29, 2012 6:48 AM

I'm using RoboHelp 8 and Word 2007.

We are trying to do as much as possible in Word, so that the work required after import is minimized. One of our most time-consuming post-import tasks is creating the Related Topics button at the bottom of each topic. In most cases, we are importing a large Word file that contains many topics, including those that should be listed in the Related Topics button.

The decision about which topics are "related" is not too hard, and it could easily be made ahead of time. But I can't see a way to create something in Word that will automatically (or at least easily) result in a Related Topics button after import.

Any suggestions? Thanks for your help.

-- George

200 Views 3 Replies Latest reply: George the scribe, Mar 29, 2012 10:17 AM

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5,054 posts
Oct 8, 2004

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1. RoboColum(n),

Mar 29, 2012 7:06 AM in reply to George the scribe

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This will not be possible to do in Word. Maybe you could automate this to a point in RoboHelp. It would involve either creating a script to add the XHTML to the relevant topics or using a find and replace tool to do the same. However both would require a degree of manual intervention which may make it pointless.

Colum

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2. Captiv8r,

Mar 29, 2012 9:29 AM in reply to RoboColum(n)

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Hi all

While I agree with Colum that you likely won't be able to create code or whatever on the Word side that magickally transforms to a Related Topics button over in RoboHelp when it arrives, I'm wondering if you might "kind of" get there by looking at the HTML code for one of these beasties and just paste it as text into Word. Then once it arrives on the other end in RoboHelp, you could cut the text and paste into the HTML view to produce the button. Then you could easily edit the button to include the topics you wish to relate.

You might also consider submitting a Wish Form to ask Adobe to build in some functionality that allows this to happen.

Cheers... Rick

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3. George the scribe,

Mar 29, 2012 10:17 AM in reply to Captiv8r

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That's an interesting suggestion, Rick.

I find that adding the Related Topics button adds about 30 statements to the HTML code, but only three of them appear to be specific to the particular instance. I could presumably write a simple Perl script (or maybe even get by with find-and-replace in Word) to modify the statements that need to be changed, then store that chunk of HTML as text in the Word file.

I imagine it would take me a least a day or two to work out and test the procedure. Now I need to decide whether that would be worth it in terms of speeding up the import process. I'm no HTML expert, so it may take me a while to figure it out (but I'm also not afraid to experiment).

I'll also put in the request to Adobe. I suspect there are others out there who would appreciate an easy way to prepare the Related Topics information ahead of time, in Word.

-- George

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