6 Replies Latest reply: Sep 21, 2013 12:31 PM by David Hurlston

This is a bit of information for folks that use Robohelp for Word.

Theodorakis55 May 16, 2013 7:40 AM

I know this is all a day late and a follar short but for those folks that still use Robohelp for Word:

If your company is going to Windows 7, X5 will not work. You need to bump it up to at least RH8.

Even after you upgrade, if you use the tripane (winhelp_2000) view in RH for Word, it will not work on Windows 7 even with the microsoft patch. With the patch it will look like an older version of RH in winhelp_4. At least I have not been able to get it to display.

What will work is if you compile it in Webhelp. You will loose some links. I know I should be moving to Robhelp Html and I tried, but when I did that I got a lot of garbage at the top of all my topics, I lost all my external links and I would have to retrain my partner...

Now about links. My only complaint about Robohelp for Word was it's limited external linking capacity. If you use RH for Word you know you can only brouse to the net or to an htm or html document. It doesn't mean you can't link to a PDF or an excel spread sheet. You just can't brouse to it. You can manually enter the path. I just changed 740+ htm links to pdf links (pdf in same file as htm and the names were the same except for extension) and it worked. If you intend to try this back up.

Anyway, if this helps anyone great..if not thanks for letting me babble. I like my Robohelp for Word in Webhelp format.

Peggy Theo.

1. Re: This is a bit of information for folks that use Robohelp for Word.

Peter Grainge May 17, 2013 1:45 AM (in response to Theodorakis55)

Thanks for posting this Peggy.

It is worth adding that there is another way of continuing to work with Word - using Linked Documents in RoboHelp HTML. You create Word documents entirely independent of RoboHelp and then create topics by linking those documents in a RoboHelp HTML project.

You cannot create WinHelp that way but WinHelp is on life support and requires users to download a viewer, you cannot distribute it. It really is time to move on from WinHelp.

RoboHelp for Word is not getting much development and does not get the new features being added to RoboHelp HTML.

Linking is covered on my site.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge
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2. Re: This is a bit of information for folks that use Robohelp for Word.

Theodorakis55 May 21, 2013 10:32 AM (in response to Peter Grainge)

Thanks for the feedback. i've had bad luck converting my winhelp to Robohelp HTML. Lost tons of links when I did. It worked better when I compiled in webhelp but using Robohelp for Word. It does everything I need it to do, including directly linking pdf, excel, power points etc. It runs on windows 7 and can use Office 10 (with patch). Any new projects I'll work in RH HTML but my old projects just don't take well to conversion. Like one of my projects has over 100,000 links to external documents....I have no desire to relink everything.

I am compiling in WEBHELP (single source) instead of winhelp, but still using RH for Word. It works so everyone is happy.
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3. Re: This is a bit of information for folks that use Robohelp for Word.

Peter Grainge May 21, 2013 10:41 AM (in response to Theodorakis55)

OK but if you do decide to give conversion another go I would try generating a CHM from RoboHelp for Word and then reverse engineering that as covered on my site. I am not guaranteeing it will be seamless but it's worth a shot.

100.000 links? Sheesh.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge
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4. Re: This is a bit of information for folks that use Robohelp for Word.

Freespirit-ST Sep 12, 2013 8:03 AM (in response to Peter Grainge)

Just seeing, and needing, this information now. I have a RoboHelp for Word project, in RH8, that may need to run in Windows 7. I can't convert it, because it is context-sensitive to our system (one of them) - and all the attachment links are hard-coded into the system, so would take an enormous effort to change the code. This is our only RH for Word project, and the system is barely used - but occasionally needs an update.

So, if we had our users download WinHelp32.EXE into the appropriate Help installation file location, would this HLP work?? It's a Winhelp 2000 with the tri-pane presentation. (Looking for a quick fix here.)

Thanks as always for your assistance, Peter!
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5. Re: This is a bit of information for folks that use Robohelp for Word.

Peter Grainge Sep 14, 2013 7:50 AM (in response to Freespirit-ST)

Users can download a link that will make a HLP file run. Whether or not Rh8 for Word will run under Windows 7 is another matter. Rh8 HTML was patched during its lifetime to run under Windows 7 but I don't know if that applied to Rh8 for Word.

I think you are just going to have to try it.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge
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6. Re: This is a bit of information for folks that use Robohelp for Word.

David Hurlston Sep 21, 2013 12:31 PM (in response to Peter Grainge)

We generate legacy WH2000 projects all day long that run properly under Vista/Win7/Win8. Maybe you didn't do the registry tweak needed for macros to run properly, or you are running on an intranet. Take a close look at the knowledge base article at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917607

We also generate WebHelp and HTML5 multi-screen. We have found that converting a WH2000 project hpj to multi-screen is not completely trouble-free and some work is needed on the Word files to get the correct output.

All in all, it's best to get off WinHelp. Odds are you will be forced to do it sooner or later anyway given Microsoft's aversion to it
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