RoboHelp 8 with MS Office 2003 and 2010 trial

[Guest]

I have been using MS Word 2003 with RoboHelp for years. In the past, I tried MS Word (Office) 2007 but like many others, found it very difficult to work with, so reverted to Office 2003.

Yesterday, I installed a trial version of MS Office 2010 Home and Business, to see if there were any improvements. I can still fully use MS Office 2003.

Today I tried RoboHelp 8 HTML export to Word. But I get an error message "Cannot find Microsoft Word installed on your system."

But they're there and fully functional.

Does anyone know of a work-around so that I can still work with Word 2003? I assume there's a path defined somewhere?

[Peter Grainge]

That is because 2010 is the current version of Word on your system.

Fire up 2003 and it will show a configuration dialog. Let that run and let Word open. Close it and you can now use RH again.

If you start up 2010 it will show a configuration dialog. Let that run and you can used 2010. To use RH again you have to run Word 2003 again.

RH will be happy if Word 2003 was the last version used.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Guest]

Hello Peter,

I tried your suggestion, but I'm sorry to say that it didn't work.

1. I closed all MS Office programs. Opened MS Word 2003, then closed it. Tried to export RH8 project to Word - get the message, "Cannot find Microsoft Word installed on your system."

2. Repeat with MS Word 2003 actually open, but no docs open: I get the same message.

3. Repeat with MS Word 2003 actually open and a blank page doc open: I get the same message.

I tried this on different RH projects - same problem.

I even opened MS Word 2003 before starting RH8 - same problem.

This not good news. I need to evaluate Office 2010 for a reasonable time; but it appears that this is not compatible with RH8 anyway; and I am about to start a Help project for a client, for which it is essential that I have the MS Word 2003 link operating.

I wonder, if I uninstall MS Office 2010, will RH8 revert to working with Word 2003 again? And what if it doesn't?

There must be a fix somewhere; might it be to do with a registry setting, perhaps?

Potentially, this problem could affect every user of RH8 who runs a trial version of MS Office 2010.

HELP anyone?

By the way - I have RoboHelp HTML, not RoboHelp 8 for Word.

[Peter Grainge]

Cannot find Microsoft Word installed on your system.

That is a known and separate problem in both RH7 and 8. There is a fix that I will send you.

Then I believe you will find it does work as I set out. I have it working on three machines.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge