ROBOHelp 8.0 Hangs while importing large MSWord documents

[SanjeevKumarMaheve]

I am using trial version of ROBOHelp 8.0 for converting one of the very big MSWord documents (25 MB) into HTML format but I'm facing problems. The actual requirement is that authors of the current document will still be using MSWord document for upgrading informadtion as MSWord is commonly available and easy to use and needs no training. Once the document is ready, the same needs to be converted into (say) CHM/WebHelp/Flash/Java format(s) without much manual efforts. When we are importing current MSWord document into ROBOHelp, it hangs and does not recover. I tried many number of time but still facing the same problem (ROBOHelp works fine with small size Word documents). Even PDF import is also not working which is 9-10 MB in size. The PC which I am using is having 1 GB of RAM and 2.5 GHz Intel Processor let me know if this is the bottleneck.

If the ROBOHelp tool works for us, we will be buying the same. As document can not be created from the begining in ROBOHelp again since it has evolved from past 10-12 years and would need lots and lots person hours we would like to seek your help addressing this problem.

Will be waiting for your response.

Regards,

Sanjeev KM

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Only 1 GB of RAM - yeah, you're going to choke on that for sure. Try adding more RAM & what your performance is like. My guess is that it's still going to be very slow going with a doc that size.

[SanjeevKumarMaheve]

Thanks Jeff for your reply. Definitely I will be trying the same after RAM upgrade is done.

Meanwhile just curious to know whether importing MSWord document in 'Adobe RoboHelp 8 for Word' is the only option available or there are another possibilities as well. The basis behind this question is that in future converting this sort of large MSWord document may be more painful as size will keep on increasing. I saved MSWord document as HTML and then tried using freely available HTML splitter Perl utility from sourceforge to split single big HTML into smaller HTML files based on desired levels of headings (e.g. 3) and then imported into ROBOHelp 8.0 for conversion in to desired output format. Atleast I could load all the HTML files after a long time into the tool and could generate TOC and index files before compiling into CHM format. Probably automatic geneation of TOC is not that good in ROBOHelp as it is in Microsoft's HHW (HTML Help Workshop -Obsolete software) and needs manual efforts post generations (Please correct if I am missing anything here).

Let me know if anybody has better idea than mentioned above or previously, it will really be helpful.

Thanks

Sanjeev KM

[Peter Grainge]

Fewer a fewer people are using RH for Word and apart from keeping up with Word versions when RH HTML is upgraded, I don't see many feature changes in recent versions. Take a hint.

You could link to documents if the format is good but that is a big if. I would also suggest that even with more RAM, organising things so that you are dealing with smaller documents would be beneficial.

Saving Word documents as HTML is going to give you problems no matter how you do it. It's like putting diesel in a petrol car. Word's HTML is not kosher, no matter what you do with it. See Importing on my site. It needs an update but the fundamentals are still valid.

Maybe you need to be thinking of getting that information into RH then as well as generating the online help, you can generate those documents out of RH for the people who use them. They can update those documents and you then use Word's tracking to locate the changes and make them in RH.

Either cut and paste from Word to RH (yeah I know) or import and clean up thoroughly to get things under way, then produce those documents rather than have others produce the originals, if that's possible.

If the situation is that you must continue to use documents produced by others, then your line manager needs to understand he

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[SanjeevKumarMaheve]

Thanks Peter for your valuable inputs and useful links for referring detailed information. I completely agree with your statement that there may be certain format related issues espacially when document has been evolved over the years in past. I need to check with my seniors regarding feasibility of adopting to approaches mentioned in your reply above.

The last line in your repy seems to be incomplete, let me know incase I missed out any valuable information there.

Thanks once again,

Sanjeev Kumar Maheve

[Peter Grainge]

Oops! I think it was along the lines that he must ensure that everyone producing documentation has to work to a standard that can be released.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[SanjeevKumarMaheve]

Thanks