Robohelp 9 does not generate table headers

[Guest]

Hi all,

the new table style mapping works, but is of no worth for me if Robohelp is not able to generate table headers in the Word output. Having headers in Word is also a prerequisite for the first line to repeat on each new page.

Is there a way to output the first line as a header?

[Peter Grainge · Accepted solution]

HTML does not have the concept of repeating the header row on each page because an HTML page is one page, albeit it print over several. Print any HTML table you find from any source and I don't think you can make the header repeat. Hopefully Willam can confirm.

Because of that it is not possible for HTML to send that information to a Word document.

On my site there is a macro to find every table in a document. You could then amend that to apply that property to every table.

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@petergrainge

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

I can partially confirm that. HTML does have the concept of table headers, captions, footers and content. When using a table that is set up correctly, most browsers will render the table header on every printed page:

<table>

     <thead>
          <tr><th>First heading</th><th>Second heading</th></tr>
     </thead>
     <tbody>
          <tr><td>Value</td><td>Value</td></td>
     <tbody>
</table>RoboHelp does not use such tables. You can manually create these tables in HTML mode. When converting that to Word, the table headings are correctly converted to a Word table heading. In my default Word template, these headers correctly repeat after every pagebreak. But when you switch to Design view, RoboHelp then removes the structure information. The above table will be recreated as:<table>
  <tr><th>First heading</th><th>Second heading</th></tr>
  <tr><td>Value</td><td>Value</td></td>
</table>This table will not have it's first row set as a header in Word.As to what to do, I can think of two options:
  - You can write a script to quickly transform the tables in your project to have a table structure that works for printed documentation. Since RoboHelp will reset your tables, you will need to execute this script every time you want to generate your Word output. Also, because the structure of the tables will be changed, you probably need to amend your css. (The first table row uses th instead of td.)
  - Personally, I use default RoboHelp tables and I use the macro Peter mentioned. Peter's site contains several macro's that will greatly improve the quality of the RoboHelp Word output.
 
Greet,Willam

[Guest]

William,

thanks for the infos, we posted at the same time so I missed you at first. I actually tried to insert a thead section and found that it did not work, but I did not understand that the reason was Robohelp removing it again..

[Guest]

Peter,

please excuse evidently I was unclear about my problem. Not Robohelp should repeat the table headings, Word should. All that is necessary for this is to mark the first row as a heading in Word. I have a macro that automatically turns all first rows of tables into headings, and then Word does the rest and automatically repeats them on all pages.

That is 50% of what I need to achieve, so I can actually solve this with my macro.

The other 50% is that the table headings should also take the formatting defined for table headings in the Word table style. This does not work, even if I run the macro. So instead of relying on mapping the table style I use dedicated inline styles for headings and body and rund the macro after publishing.

[Peter Grainge]

I understood you OK. What I was saying that because HTML did not understand table headers, it could convey that information when creating the Word table. In fact Willam has clarified that it is RoboHelp that does not understand table headers but the response remains the same.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Guest]

peter G: I can't find the table finder macro you mentioned on your site. looked in several of your pages and performed a search of your site using the keyword "table"  Can you provide a link please?

Also, i have not tried creating a word template as yet, but can i just create a word template that has repeat header row in the table and then specify this template when i publish my robohelp project to word? i'm not sure how word handles table styles in template.

[Peter Grainge]

http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/word/word_macros.htm

Table is used widely on the site so not a good search term.

You cannot put Repeat Header Row in a template as a single feature.

The nearest you can come is that in RoboHelp 9 you can map your RoboHelp tables that you have defined in the CSS to tables that you have defined in Word as table styles. I am not sure offhand though whether when defining a Word table that you can specify Repeat Header Row, it may be something you have to do in each table that uses the style in a document.

Either way, the macro on my site can apply that setting to any table. The macro applies various style features and they may not be what you want. For example it applies border colours. You can amend or remove any style change that you do not want so you could amend it to only apply the header row definition.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Guest]

Here's a repeat header row option provided by the microsoft office forum using Word 2010 (although it may work in lower versions). It entails modifying the word template you use to generate the Word doc.

You can specify a default table style in your Word template. In the Table Styles group of the Table Tools Design tab, right-click a style and select the "Set as Default" option on the context menu.

make sure the default table is set to repeat header rows: To do this, right-click the table style and select "modify table style" select "apply formatting to" "header row" and set the "repeat header" check box in format>table properties.

When setting up your printed documention properties, be sure to map the table style(s) in your robohelp project to the word template table style(s) that contains the repeat header row.

[Peter Grainge]

I am interested to know whether that is theory or whether you have tested it and found it works. Not doubting you but I have seen other printed documentation theories crushed by RoboHelp.

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@petergrainge

[Guest]

I am using the method described in my reply post successfully in my robohelp 9 project.

[Peter Grainge]

Thanks Jeff. I'll add that to the Printed Documentation topic on my site. Useful.

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@petergrainge