Dump HTML to Doc

[andrewfharley]

I have a RoboHelp directory full of help pages for a site. The site's migrating and RoboHelp may or may not go with it. I need to take the sum of all the help pages and convert them into a single, long-running Word doc that users may download. Can RoboHelp HTML 5 do this? Page-by-page is no good. I need to convert the entire thing in order.

[MergeThis]

Yes, generate a Printed Document output. There's plenty of info in the RH help.


Good luck,
Leon

[andrewfharley]

Thank you. Perhaps I mis-installed RoboHelp on this machine but the Help isn't working. Click it and nothing happens. In fact, querying help as you suggest was my first thought. Perhaps you might offer a suggestion more useful than "look it up in help" next time. What's really useful when someone posts a "how do I" question is to list the steps, what menus, what screens, that kind of specific information, which actually tell HOW to do the thing requested.

Maybe I'll just Google for it if nobody has any thing more specific. Thank you again,

AFH.

[Peter Grainge]

Andrew

You need to bear in mind that the people who provide answers here are all authors like yourself who have a job to do. The answers do not come from paid Adobe support staff. Leon answered the question you asked and added that there is information about how to do it in the help.

Tutorials like you want take a lot of time to prepare and there are many variables. We know nothing about your project, the things that you may have included in it that can cause problems when printing etc. The role of forums like this is not to provide training or to rehack what is, as Leon pointed out, already in the help. I have re-read your original post and am struggling to see where you told us that the help is not working. We don't have a database that tells us if Andrew Harley posts, be aware he cannot access the help system.

Now that we do know that, we can suggest that you go to Tools | Options and tick the Use Offline Help box. That may give you access to the local version of the help.

Now there is a tutorial on Printed Documentation on my site. Perhaps when you have taken a look at it you will consider how long that took to prepare. You cannot expect anyone to put that information into a reply here.

Hopefully you will now be able to achieve what you want. If a reply isn't what you want, then there are friendlier ways of saying so.

[andrewfharley]

I am chastened by your discipline and a better man for it. I maintain, however, that simply directing someone to the help files isn't helpful. If the process is as enormously complex as you suggest, one might indicate that instead of a quick "look it up" comment.

Thank you for your site.

[Peter Grainge]

Andrew

Good response. I have to say though that what is complex and needing some hand holding for one person, the next can follow from the help. So if you respond at length to every post a lot of your effort is wasted on people who don't need that extra level.

You simply asked if it could be done. We get a fair number of questions asked here where the answer is already covered in earlier threads or the help and people cannot be bothered to look it up. (I know that wasn't your situation but we didn't know that.) So if a question appears to be in that category, someone might give a simple reply as Leon did and point you to where the information is. So if that gets 50% of the questions answered to the posters satisfaction, then that is a valid response enabling folks to get on.

Where that didn't help a poster, we are more than happy if they come back and say they have a problem with the information found or even that they cannot find it, you will find this is one of best supported forums around, questions rarely go unanswered and if they do, it is simply because none of us have hit the problem, it's then time for paid support.

The problem with responding in these and most forums is that you can give a short reply and one person will say thanks, just what I needed, and the next person with the same question and answer will need several more questions answered. If you try to anticipate that with a step by step answer, the first person will respond along the lines they didn't need the idiot's guide, just a Yes / No answer. You cannot win.

The threads tend to be iterative so if ever folks don't give the answer you need, just say so and someone will add to the thread.

Anway, let's all move on now. Welcome to this forum and if you have further problems with the printing or any other RH issue, then someone will be more than happy to help.

Did you get the offline help to work?

[Guest]

Do you have the help in HTMLHelp format as well. You could possible print all topics from there, by right clicking a book and selecting "print all sub-topics". I have done this with some success in the past, I usually output to distiller.

I am presuming you need to output in the TOC order?

hope that helps

[MergeThis]

Note: The Start button is at the far left in your Windows status bar (usually at the bottom of your computer screen).

1. Select Start > All Programs > RoboHelp Office > RoboHelp HTML.
2. Select Open an existing project/HTML file, and select a project file (.xpj).
3. Click the OK button.
4. In the Project tab, expand Single Source Layouts.
5. Right click Printed Documentation, and select Generate.
6. The Print Document General - Printed Documentation window appears.
7. Enter a name of your choice in the Enter the name of this printed documentation field.
8. Enter a path for your output in the Specify path for Printed Documentation field.
9. Select a radio button, either Generate individual document (chapter_01_name.doc...)
or Generate a single document.
10. In the Images panel, select either Embed in documents (images are inside the document)
or Link to documents (images are in a sub-directory - .\Images).
11. In the Conditional Build Expression panel, accept the default of (None) or click Define to
display the Define Conditional Build Tag Expression window and create the exclusions you want.
12. If you select Start each topic on a new page, you can also choose options in the Advanced
Options window by clicking Advanced.
13. If you select Generate PDF in the PDF Support panel, you can select options by
clicking PDF Settings.
14. Click Next to display the Print Document Content - Printed Documentation window.
15. Use the single and double green arrows to include/exclude topics, either based on the TOC
or the entire project with the Show all topics check box.
16. Click Next to display the Print Document Section Layout - Printed Documentation window.
17. Select the elements, from the Section Layout panel, that RoboHelp will include in the output.
18. Click Next to display the Print Document Appearance - Printed Documentation window.
19. In the Microsoft Word Template panel:
a. Select the default (None) - Use the Project's CSS Styles.
b. Select Use Microsoft Word Templates and select a template in the Select Template File window.
c. Select Style Mapping.dot, and then customize the styles, if necessary, in the Map Non-Heading Styles panel.
20. Click Finish.

20a. To change any of the aforementioned settings without generating new output, repeat
steps 1-4, then right click Printed Documentation and select Properties. At step 20,
click Save instead of Finish.


Good luck,
Leon