Bulleted List Alignment Problem when Importing to RH8

[Guest]

I am imported Word 2003 documents into RH8 and my bullets and numbered lists are not aligning correctly. Both are custom styles configured via Outline Numbering and work fine in Word. After importing, each bullet/number has an extra space on the first line so subsequent lines are not aligned.  When I reviewed the CSS, the entries for these styles all have a text-indent of -.25, which I am assuming is wrong since the Word ListContinue styles (which display correctly) do not. I pulled the HTML line out of the CSS but everytime I import again, it is reinserted into my custom CSS.

I have attached a screen capture of what it looks like in RH.

I am relatively new to RH, don't know HTML, and no matter where I turn, no one seems able to help. I can get it to work by putting all bulleted and numbered lists into borderless tables bu we have thousands of pages of Word documents we would have to do this to. There has to be a better solution and it is really driving me crazy with frustration. Please, can anyone help me?

thanks!

Kathi

[Peter Grainge]

Kathi

We cannot see your image as it is queued and nobody seems to be releasing it. Try using the Insert image icon (the camera) instead.

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[Guest]

The first image is what displays in RH after importing the Word 2003 doc.

The second one shows the List Bullet style in Word.

The third one shows the List Bullet style in RH after the actual import (not linked).

[Peter Grainge]

Reduce your document to just one page that includes a list giving this problem. Import that into a new project and check it still indents incorrectly. If it does send me that Word document via my site with a link to this thread.

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[Guest]

I sent you the Word doc. Hopefully, you can figure it out.

Thank you!

Kathi

[Peter Grainge]

That small indent is the least of the your worries!

When you import ordinary numbered lists, you need to tick this field in RH's Other settings. (Accessed when you click the Edit button in the Import screens.)

If you do not, then what is imported looks like a list but it is not. If you import the document you sent me and press Enter at the end of the list, you will not get another bullet. When you do select that option, you do get another bullet. But see what it does with the list.

Your settings in Word are below and I suspect the extra indent could be resolved by playing with the Bullet Position and Text Position settings. Also try changing the space after from Tab to Space. Tabs are not an HTML concept.

After import, I selected the list and then clicked the new RH8 icon, Create a MultiLevel list. It gave me a numbered list as that was the style I just randomly selected. It did seem to tidy things up so I think using that also needs exploring.

It's a bit stale now but there is an article on my site about numbered and bulleted lists when exporting to Word. It precedes the new Multi Level list functionality but you will see that the conclusion was to that things only worked easily when using the bullet and number icons and the indent icon. I suspect the same is applying to this import. In Word could you not just click the Bullet icon and then the Indent icon as required, rather then create all these List styles. I set up my Word lists to work that way and although I don't import much, it does seem to work.

I realise that doesn't give you a nice concise solution but hopefully it will help you experiment and find one.

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[Guest]

I had played some with the List check box in the Other Settings but

abandoned that when I saw how it aligned the subsequent lines. But you are

right, I do need to use it otherwise I will have problems when we are at a

point when our documentation will be updated in RH instead of Word.

I had tried changing the Tab to Space, which disables the Text Position

field, but that didn't work either. I tried that a while ago so don't

recall specifically what happened on the RH side.

When I tried using the Bullet toolbar buttons, which create inline styles,

RH stripped out the levels so each entry would have to be manually

adjusted after the import. Our documentation exceeds 15,000 pages and all

of it will require importing into RH so I really need a solution that

requires no manual adjustment after the import. I know RH will create

styles from inline styles but that results in an excessive number of

styles just for bullets, since each variation (bold, italics, etc)

generates a new style. We use styles too much to have to navigate through

all that.

There are a couple of reasons why we use the List styles created  by

Microsoft for Word. Using styles keeps the documentation consistent

between all writers and more importantly, when a format is changed, you

only need to change the style once in the template and all the doc is

automatically updated. With inline styles, each instance would have to be

manually changed.

I did try creating a RH Lists style and also tried doing a Multi-Level

Lists style within RH but that proved painful. But I was not linking the

style with the before-mentioned List check box for RH Lists. I will have

to look more into that.

The articles on your website leave me to believe that maybe we should

resign ourselves to fixing the bullets/numbering on the RH side instead of

on the Word side prior to the import.

Thanks for your suggestions and the wealth of info on your website!

Kathi

[MergeThis]

You might look into using Word macros to clean up those files before importing to RH. Word allows you to replace styles, so you would

1. Find xxx list style
2. Replace with Normal
3. Apply bullets/numbers
4. Go to next xxx list style and repeat

Many RH forum rats have had great luck with macros, although I haven't. Maybe they could chime in if you need more details. (Or there might be info in the RH for Word forum,)

Good luck,

Leon

[Guest]

Leon, thanks for your input. Are you suggesting we run a macro to change all our list styles to inline styles in Word and then after the doc is imported into RH, we manually go through and adjust all the list levels?

Kathi

[MergeThis]

No, I'm suggesting that all the formatting (actually a style-to-format conversion) be done in Word, so that the import to RH might require no additional editing (beyond possibly indenting un-number/bullet paragraphs). That is, the resulting Normal-numbered and Normal-bulleted paragraphs would be "formatted" but not "styled," and the underlying HTML for a numbered list would simply be <ol><li></li></ol> without any "span" or "class" identifiers.

In addition, doing this type of thing in RH is more problematic because removing styles in RH often leaves behind some odd artifacts that can trip you up later.

Good luck,

Leon

[Guest]

Would it be less problematic (in general) if we converted the Word doc to XML and then imported that into RH?

Kathi

[MergeThis]

If Word's conversion to XML works as well(?) as its conversion to HTML has in the past, I'd say a resounding NO!