Hi,
I was in a similar situation. I used Frame at all my previous
jobs, but wasn't able to use it at this one. But after a lot of
testing, I decided it was better to create content in RH7 HTML and
output it to WebHelp, Word, and then PDF. This process allows me to
focus on the look and feel of the online help, which is our
preferred output. (The PDFs get used by only a few customers on
special request, so I don't care if they're especially "pretty.")
There was a bit of a learning curve to authoring in RH7, but
it's a fun tool once you get the hang of it (way more fun to use on
a daily basis than Word). Plus it seems much more stable and more
predictable than Word. And, I may be mistaken, but I think that
you're less likely to encounter formatting issues going from RH to
Word/PDF, than from Word to RH.