Importing a RoboHelp for Word project results in carnage

[toreba]

Hi,

Using a newly installed version of RoboHelp v11, I find that there's no 'RoboHelp for Word' any more, so I thought I'd import my 'RoboHelp for Word' projects into 'RoboHelp HTML'. I last edited these projects in 'RoboHelp for Word' v9.

Using default settings, the import completes but:

• the first topic is preceded by page of nonsense font codes:
  
• very few of the embedded, contents or index hyperlinks;
  
  
• the 'URL' entries in the project manager are mostly garbage, and look as though there's some sort of Unicode issue.

Is there a guide somewhere for the average idiot like me as to how to reliably import old 'RoboHelp for Word' projects?

Thanks for any advice.

Trevor Cooper

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

When you used RoboHelp for Word, what was your output type? You might find you have better luck using different files. But before we can say what those files are, we need to know the output. From what I'm seeing, I'm suspecting CHM. But I'm not sure.

Cheers... Rick

[toreba]

Rick!

Yes, you're absolutely right, .chm.

What does that suggest then?

Cheers

TC

[Captiv8r]

If you have CHM, there are a couple of ways you might try it.

First, look at your source files. Do you see a file with an extension of HHP? If so, that's a Microsoft HTML Help file that is used to build your CHM. So I'd try again by creating a project based on the HHP. See how that goes.

If that fails or doesn't provide satisfactory results, you might want to try reverse engineering the CHM file. (hopefully you still have a CHM handy)

My good friend Peter Grainge offers information at the link below for reverse engineering.

Click here to view

Cheers... Rick

[Willam_van_Weelden]

I've updated a few RH for Word projects by reverse engineering the (WebHelp) output as Rick indicates. For me, that was by far the easiest. Unfortunately you lose things like variables and conditional tags.

(Shameles plug): Apart from Peter's manual instructions, I offer recovery scripts for several outputs: Recovery script | WvanWeelden.eu

Kind regards,

Willam

[toreba]

Rick, Willam,

Thanks for your advice. But does anyone understand why RoboHelp v11 is so useless at opening projects from RoboHelp for Word v9? Is it such an outrageous thing to want to do? I would have thought not, given that there's no longer a RoboHelp for Word in the latest version...

Regards

Trevor Cooper

[Peter Grainge]

Two links that might help here.

See Item 8 in Snippets on my site. It is a How To for your scenario that was written by someone who had the same problem but in a much older version than you have. Nonetheless it might still help.

See Item 5 in Snippets for what appears to be the font list problem you are seeing.

(The links are to different areas of the Snippets page).

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge