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Can no longer design html file in Word after saving in RH

New Here ,
Aug 19, 2009 Aug 19, 2009

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I'm using RH Html 8.

After importing an html file into myproject (which was created in MS Word 2007), then editing it in RH and saving it, i can no longer view the final display version of the html's contents in MS Word - just the html code in the file itself. Is there a way to make this work, or do i have to use RH from this point forward in order to edit it in "designer view"?

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Guest
Aug 19, 2009 Aug 19, 2009

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Everything I have read about RH8 and Word suggests that you cannot copy a file back and forth and edit it in both environments. Word and RH have both made strides to clean up their proprietary HTML files, but neither one is completely standard.

However, there are a couple of different ways to single-source a file between RH and Word. The idea is to choose which environment you make the initial edits in and which environment receives the edited files.

Edit in Word: If you can get the styles to match, you can use the new linking functionality in RH8. This assumes you edit the Word file only; changes are made automatically when you open the RoboHelp file. The downside is that if you change the file in RoboHelp, the link is broken, and Word changes stop flowing to the topic.

Edit in RoboHelp: The long-established Printed Documentation functionality in RH lets you generate Word documents from RoboHelp files. You can then save the Word output to HTML if you have a need for separate HTML pages.

I'm not suggesting RoboHelp for Word (which can produce WebHelp but uses Word for its editor) because it sounds like you really want HTML editing capacities. However, you can pick your HTML editor in RoboHelp for HTML - if you want fine control over HTML, you can edit in DreamWeaver or something similar.

I'm curious about how this editing process came about. Are you creating separate HTML outputs (one help, one "flat file," for example)? If so, I'd like to know - I had to do that a few years ago, and it was trickier than I thought.

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New Here ,
Aug 20, 2009 Aug 20, 2009

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I'm basically just trying to support having documents in my project which will be written and maintained by other team members who don't have robohelp and who only write documentation every now and then. The marketing side of me suspects this problem is deliberate so that it forces every single person on a team to have a copy of robohelp installed but i could be wrong. Basically i want my team members to be able to maintain their html doc in a tool that they all have such as ms word or visual studio, whilst i maintain the robohelp project itself which will contain these files. But given this problem, once their html docs are added to the RH project, RH modifies it in such as way that editors like word or vs can non longer display it in its final web presentation form.... just in raw html form.

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LEGEND ,
Aug 20, 2009 Aug 20, 2009

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Hi,

In RoboHelp you can link to a Word document, using File | link | Word document. This will allow everyone to stay using MS Word, while you can have your source files updated with every change.

I don't use this myself, so I don't know how it works exactly. Someone else might jump in to tell you more about this feature.

Greet,

Willam

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LEGEND ,
Aug 20, 2009 Aug 20, 2009

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Hi Willam

I'd like to amend your statement slightly...

W. van Weelden wrote:

Hi,

In RoboHelp HTML version 8 you can link to a Word document, using File | link | Word document. This will allow everyone to stay using MS Word, while you can have your source files updated with every change.

I don't use this myself, so I don't know how it works exactly. Someone else might jump in to tell you more about this feature.

Greet,

Willam

Cheers... Rick

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LEGEND ,
Aug 20, 2009 Aug 20, 2009

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Hi there

As Elisa indicated earlier, it's quite possible to have others work in this manner. What you cannot do, however, is expect to make edits to the HTML that results in being saved and incorporated back into the Word.

It's like baking a cake. Sure, you can have others supply you with the batter, but if you choose to add chocloate chips into the mix after they have given you the batter, you can't give the batter back to them and expect it to return to flour, eggs and milk again.

Modify the HTML all you want, but know that any changes in Word upstream will result in your having to change it again later when you choose to update the Word.

I disagree that it's an insidious trick by Adobe to goad you into purchasing more RoboHelp licenses. If anything, it's actually the opposite. You now have the ability to have others maintain Word content (in Word) yet have it appear in RoboHelp as HTML topics. What you need to focus on here is how best to have the Word content handled so it ends up as HTML with no to minimal tweaking afterwards.

Cheers... Rick

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Community Expert ,
Aug 20, 2009 Aug 20, 2009

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There is some information on linking to Word documents on my site. See the Using RH8 topic and look at the RoboHelp Tour.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

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New Here ,
Aug 20, 2009 Aug 20, 2009

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Looks like linking to a word file is going to work!

One issue i ran into when i tried this was that the images don't show up (it just shows the outline of where the image would be with a small icon with a red x). I've embedded a link to an image in my word document, but when i generate my webhelp pro and view the page that was originally created in word, the image doesn't show up. Actually if i preview that html file in the project itself it doesn't show up there either. I looked at the generated html code and the relative path specified is correct so i'm not sure why the image won't display.

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New Here ,
Aug 20, 2009 Aug 20, 2009

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I did some more digging on the image problem and it appears that the image link path embedded by RH into the html is wrong.

ie: if the html file generated by RH for my word doc is in:

C:\blah\app\team\User Guide\Docs\New_Folder\MyDoc

and the image (MyPicture.png) is located in :

C:\blah\app\team\User Guide\Images

RH will generate this relative path which walks backwards 6 folders when it should be 7 folders:

../../../../../../blah/app/team/User%2520Guide/Images/MyPicture.png

Interestingly, manually correcting it with an extra "../" still does not fix the problem for some reason.

What it should generate instead is the following relative path (which does work):

../../../Image/MyPicture.png

I'm assuming that updating the html file will wipe out this manual fix so is there a way to fix this RH or is this a bug?

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LEGEND ,
Aug 20, 2009 Aug 20, 2009

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Hi there

I'm going to say it's likely a bug. One you should seriously consider reporting to Adobe. (LInk is in my sig)

Personally, I avoid any contact with Word. So thank God I don't run into this. But from what you wrote it would seem that RoboHelp is incorrectly calculating (or attempting to calculate) a relative path that leads outside the project to an absolute path where the Word document is.

Cheers... Rick

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New Here ,
Aug 20, 2009 Aug 20, 2009

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Thanks for the quick response.

So unless there is a workaround for this bug it sounds like linking Word files isn't an option. Does this mean that there is no way for other (non RH) users to maintain files that will be used in my RH project or is there some other workflow that i could use. It only needs to be "one way" as described in the baking analogy previously, but at this point i'm not sure if theres any options left.

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LEGEND ,
Aug 20, 2009 Aug 20, 2009

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Hi again

Perhaps it depends on how the images are being used in the Word document. I think they may be used in two different ways. They can be embedded or linked. Whatever they are doing, try the opposite method and see if any change results on the RoboHelp end.

Cheers... Rick

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New Here ,
Aug 20, 2009 Aug 20, 2009

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Looks like the image gets copied to a subfolder of the html file when i embed the image in the word doc. This will work, but I'll have to live with any images shared between word docs being duplicated for each doc.

A more serious issue that i discovered with this though, is that the copy of the image is not the same image format as that embedded in the word doc. ie: i embedded a .png file in the word doc but the copy of the image in the subfolder is a .gif file (which of course ends up giving very poor quality). Is this a bug as well or is there a way to control the output image format?

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Participant ,
Aug 21, 2009 Aug 21, 2009

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This sounds similar to something I recently discovered in connection with export to Word. See http://forums.adobe.com/thread/214224.

--- Derek

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LEGEND ,
Aug 19, 2009 Aug 19, 2009

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Hi,

In Tools | Options | Tool location, you can set which HTML editors you want to use. You can set Word as your default editor and edit all topics in Word, or you can set auto select editor and only associate specific files with Word.

Greet,

Willam

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