images won't import with Word docs in RoboHelp 8

[Guest]

Hello-

I have received absolutely no support/answers from Adobe tech Support (they can't say when Tier 2 will contact me). Their support is awful, check out the enclosed letter I received (by the way, the Kbase article referred to in the letter does not exist).

Because of this I am turning to all the Joe Q. Public people out there, maybe you can help me out, as I am a relative "newbie" to RoboHelp.

First, what I'm working with:

Windows XP SP3

RoboHelp 8

Word 2003 SP3

Please note I am on a US Government machine, so I can only obtain Admin rights on a temporary basis.

I have inherited several large (350+ pages) documents that need to be converted to html via RH HTML in a short period of time.

Importing the documents has been a breeze except for the fact NONE of the images are being imported. Regardless if they are in line with text, or in tables, they just aren't being imported. I have tried various methods to see if I can get it to work. Here is what I have tried:

1. Importing directly from Word (Local Drive)

2. Converting to pdf and importing (Local Drive)

3. Establishing links (Local Drive)

4. Trying above from a Network Drive

None of the above worked. The only method that did work was manually copying and pasting the images into the "placeholders" that did import (however, no placeholders appeared in tables). This is fine with small documents,but not ones that are 350+ pages with literally thousands of images.

Please note I checked the rather weak Help that came with RH HTML, and all it stated was that images import along with Word. It also said that the image should be .gif or .jpeg, and that the images should be placed in frames.

I checked the documents I was working with, and all the images were either .gif or .jpeg.

I then even created a mini document with a .gif that was placed in a frame. I then imported the Word document into RH HTML; but again, the image did NOT import.

What makes this even more frustrating is that several years ago (before I was here) the Help was created and posted with the images using RH X5, so I can't figure out why this new and improved version can't import the images.

Any suggestions would be *greatly* appreciated.

Thanks,

-Steve C

[Peter Grainge]

Sorry for slow reply from the forum as well.

Do the images have any alignment applied in the Word doc? If so try removing it.

Would this be a document you could send me offline? There have been some reports of problems like this and a rogue document like this would help. By all means remove the text (if you do, please check the import still fails).

Contact details are on my site.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Guest]

Peter-

I dashed a letter to the email address the VP had posted in Sept 09. I received a reply from Escalated Customer Service and someone from Tier 2 called me and is working with me.

However, he cannot replicate the problem I am having (he is researching the possibilities it is a Perferences or setup issue and will call me back). It does not matter what documents I use; I can send you a very basic file I created that has no work info on it. It will not import with or without text. We even tried using a .docx file he created, to no avail.

What's most frustrating is that RH8 tells me it imported the image (along with the .css & .htm), but it doesn't appear in RH8.

Of course, if and when I get a solution, I will let you and the world know what it is!!!

-Steve

[Peter Grainge]

Still send me a document with some garbage text and some images. Just a page or two will do.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[archerdc]

I have the exact same issue. Brand new installations of Windows 7, Office 2007, and RoboHelp 8.

When I import the Word document using RoboHelp 8 for HTML, everything looks great but no images just as described above. If I use RoboHelp 8 for Word, it imports the images but they look terrible.

I did a lot of the annotations and labelings on screenshots in Visio and pasted them into the Word doc as Visio objects. Would that cause RoboHelp to handle them poorly (in the second scenario)?

Also, do I have to save all my images as a JPG or PNG (and flatten the layers) before including them in Word docs I intend to import in to RoboHelp? I have had no problems at all simply pasting screenshots (after some light cropping/editing) directly into Word and then exporting to PDF.

[Guest]

Yankcap-

I apologize for not posting my fix sooner (thanks Peter!). My issue was fixed in two places. (Part 1 can also be found at www.grainge.org (Look under Snippets and choose #125)).

In Word, go to Tools->Options. Got to the General Tab and choose the Web Options button. Check the above link for how to do in Word 2007.

Make sure that the Rely on VML for displaying graphics in browsers checkbox is UNchecked. This was the main problem I had. Also, to be safe, make sure the Allow PNG as a graphics format checkbox is UNchecked. Also keep in mind it's recommended that images either be in .gif or .jpeg when importing into RoboHelp HTML.

Your graphics should now import correctly.

Part 2- You also need to make sure your file names do not have spaces. If they do, make sure when you open RoboHelp for HTML you go to Tools->Options. Under the General Tab, make sure the Use underscores in file names checkbox is checked. This is important because HTML doesn't recognize spaces in file names (which is why you sometimes see %20% around file names in the IE address bar).

Hope this helped!

-Steve

[archerdc]

That works for me as well. I had no spaces in the file name but when I disabled both the VML and PNG options, it imported the images cleanly with no real impact on quality.

Glad to see a solution for this. Thanks for sharing.

Daniel

[Guest]

Daniel-

What amazed me was that there was nothing out there in the vast WWW. I had tried googling everywhere and anywhere, to no avail. But I'm glad I was able to share my newfound knowledge with you.

Cheers,

-Steve

[KM_Hanson]

Hello,

I found this thread very helpful when I was trying to import a large MSWord document into RoboHelp 8 last week.  I was having the same issues as iccohen1, but was unable to find a sufficient workaround.  I ended up taking the advice of copying and pasting from Word into RoboHelp 8 in order to complete the project by deadline.  Long story short, one of my office's tech guys recommended saving the MSWord document with the .docx extension rather than the .doc extension.  It worked like a charm!  I was able to import the entire 500+page document and all the images in one go - and it took less than 2 minutes to do so.  I don't know if this trick will help others or not, but my office will be saving our legacy files in the .docx format from now on before we import or link them to RoboHelp 8.

Best wishes,

KM Hanson