Footer in Word printed output

[mr_scribbler]

I want to prevent RoboHelp's topic footer from appearing in the printed Word output, where it shows as part of the page text (not in the Word document's footer).

I use a RH template to add the same footer to every topic in the WebHelp output but I don't want this in the printed output.
Is there a setting to turn off the footer on conversion to Word? I use RH v7.

[Peter Grainge]

Welcome to the forum.

There's no way of turning it off but it always appears as a footer.

[Chet Zeshonski]

I generate printed output all the time, and my WebHelp template footer does not appear in my Word output. So I'm surprised by Peter's reply. I probably forgot some step I took in the distant past to rectify this problem. But, if so, I don't remember what it was.

[MergeThis]

Is your footer a true RH footer? Or have you placed the content at the bottom of the template page?

True RH headers and footers are created by clicking the relevant icons that appear above the RH navigation pane (tabs for Project, TOC, etc.). This applies to topics as well as templates. When you click the footer icon, everything but your footer is dimmed; if everything is dimmed, you don't have a true RH footer.


Good luck,
Leon

[mr_scribbler]

It is a true RH footer, created as a footer in a template. In the generated Word output, the footer appears after every topic in the body of the document. My expectation is that it would either ignore the RH footer on conversion or show it in the Word footer. It appears that the default situation is to assume I want the RH footer as part of the printed document. My current solution is to tag the RH footer with a conditional build tag which is excluded in the Word output.

thanks for all replies,
mike

[Peter Grainge]

Chet

I think you are talking about the topic footer. I am talking about the footer RH creates in the Word doc, different thing.

[Peter Grainge]

Something is wrong here.To the best of my knowledge, nobody has been able to get a RH footer to become a Word footer. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Can you recreate this in a sample project with just a couple of topics?

[MergeThis]

No, I don't believe you're wrong, Peter.

Mike, what are you choosing for a Microsoft Word Template in Window 4 of the Generate wizard? If you haven't already, try selecting the "Style Mapping. dot" and see what you get. It almost seems as if you might have a style applied to the footer that is causing it to retain Word "print" status. As Peter stated, this is a highly unusual situation, so we have more questions than answers. Hopefully, a solution will emerge at some point; be patient with us.


Good luck,
Leon

[mr_scribbler]

Leon, I am using my own word template to generate the printed version. I have tried style mapping.dot and get the same results, ie. RH footer appears in the Word doc immediately after each topic as text, not as a Word footer. An odd thing is that the first printed topic does not have the footer appearing - which I gather is what should be happening.

thanks,
mike

[HKabaker]

Mike,

By default, the new Word doc layout has "different first page" selected. At least it always has been so for me.

So the footer isn't getting put on the first page, apparently.

If you create a new document in Word with that template, and insert a page break, is there a footer?

Harvey

[mr_scribbler]

Thanks Harvey, my issue is that the RH footer is being shown in the printed doc, not as a Word footer but as part of the 'page body'.

What is shown in the Word footers are the page numbers which is OK and what i expect to see.

re. your question, the first page, which is a cover page in my doc, is set as different in Page Setup in my tempate and the documents it spawns. The first topic, which prints without a following RH footer, is actually on page 7, after the TOC.

btw...i have a workaround mentioned a few posts ago, whereby a conditional built tag excludes RH footers from the printed output.

mike

[Peter Grainge]

Mike

You don't seem to have picked up on my question about being able to recreate this in a small new project. If you can, I will look at it but we are all struggling because you seem to be the only person in the world who does get the footer to print, whether or not you want it.

We need to see something hands on to figure it out.

[mr_scribbler]

Peter, sorry not to have replied earlier but I have been trying to make some sense of it or at least find a pattern to the results. So far I have the following observations:
1. In the current project there are some topics in the printed output that do NOT have the RH footer printed in the 'body', but as i posted originally, most do. The topics that do not show the footer are consequtive topics within two chapters.
2. I created a small new project based on the current project and chopped out all but a handful of topics. Here I found only one topic had the RH footer cropping up in the printed output.
3. I created a small new project from scratch (using the same template I used in the original project) and found the expected results, ie. the RH footer does not find its way into the Word output...anywhere!

This is the story so far...pls let me have any questions.

mike

[Peter Grainge]

Result 3 is the most telling, I think. A clean project works exactly as we have all been saying.

If you create a new print layout in one of the existing projects, does that then carry through the footers or does this just occur with the original print layout?

[mr_scribbler]

A new print layout produces the same result as the existing print layout. Investigations show that the 'footer carry through' issue is only on topics which were originally imported from Word docs. It does not apply to topics that have been created in RH, ie. new topics behave themselves.

btw - the RH template footer has 2 blank paras then a horizontal rule then 2 paras of text (including a copyright symbol and a hyperlink)

mike

[Peter Grainge]

It could be something in the meta tags in these topics.

Could you post the meta tags from a topic where the footer does appear in the printed output?

[mr_scribbler]

<meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<meta name=Originator content=ImportDoc>
<meta name=OriginalFile content=QD25vG2_1-1_6_HotelMgement_RH.doc>
<meta name=template content=Copyright.htt>
<meta name=generator content="Adobe RoboHelp - www.adobe.com">
<meta name=generator-major-version content=0.1>
<meta name=generator-minor-version content=1>
<meta name=filetype content=RoboHelp>
<meta name=filetype-version content=1>
<meta name=page-count content=1>
<meta name=layout-height content=526>
<meta name=layout-width content=728>

[Peter Grainge · Accepted solution]

Try taking out the second and third lines

<meta name=Originator content=ImportDoc>
<meta name=OriginalFile Content=QD25vG2_1-1_6_HotelMgement_RH.doc>

[mr_scribbler]

Peter, that's fixed it! Thanks for your patience and time. I pasted the 2 lines of meta tags into a topic in a new project, using a template constructed in the same way as my original project, and the RH footer appears in the 'body' of the printed Word topic - exactly the original problem. Maybe, someone cleverer than me can put this 'feature' to good use.

thanks,
mike