User-defined variables

[community_help]

This question was posted in response to the following article: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/robohelp/robohtml/WSBE4EE60C-6FBB-4062-AF93-27F9C233D0C3.html

[jj_sailing]

I still can't figure out how to import variables. For example, I have a UDV set for a graphic with 3 different product-branded variable sets. If I import a topic with this graphic into another project, all variables are lost.

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

Not sure I'm understanding here. When you say:

If I import a topic with this graphic into another project, all variables are lost.

Are you saying you have already defined several variables in the project and the act of importing this topic causes all the already defined varaibles to perform a disappearing act?

Or are you instead saying that by virtue of importing the topic, you are expecting RoboHelp to automatically know that you were using multiple  variable sets and you want RoboHelp to just create them for you upon importing?

If it's the latter, I'm not even sure it will be possible to accomplish, because the placement of the variable only references the variable name. So I might imagine RoboHelp could build a variable (assuming it doesn't yet exist) for use with the topic. But how would it even know there were other variable sets?

I'm thinking the answer here is that you will need to just create the variables and variable sets to match if you wish to use them in other projects. Once you have them set up, importing a topic should have no influence on whether the variables and images are lost.

Unfortuantely RoboHelp doesn't offer a way to export or import variables and variable sets. At least not any way I'm aware of. You might be able to do it by massaging some behind the scenes files.

Cheers... Rick