Trouble Linking TOC Paragraph Styles from a Word 2010 Document to a RoboHelp HTML Project

[r2silver]

I apologize if this question has been answered elsewhere. I did my best to search the forums and the web, but I haven't seen anything that helps resolve the issue I'm having yet. I am new to RoboHelp 9. I am using Word 2010 and Windows 7.

I am working on creating a WebHelp that is linked to a Word 2010 document. For the most part, I have had no trouble with the linked document, but something seems to be wrong with the styles and formatting for the TOC paragraph styles that I created in the Word document: the formatting does not apply to the topics in RoboHelp. All of the other paragraph styles (Heading 1-4, Body Text, etc.) are working perfectly. The problem seems to apply ony to text using the paragraph styles TOC 1-4.

The TOC in the Word document looks like this:

The topic containing that TOC in the RoboHelp project looks like this:

In the Word document, the entries for 1. Introduction, 2. Punctuation, and 3. Numbers are all all set to the paragraph style TOC 1. The entries for Purpose, Audiance and Applicability, Scope and Other References, etc. are all set to the paragraph style TOC 2. Both of these paragraph styles contain formatting for font and indentations, and they also appear in the RoboHelp project's .CSS file as WD_TOC 1 and WD_TOC 2.

The problem, as far as I can tell, is that the TOC 1, TOC 2, and TOC 3 styles do not appear to be applied to the text in the topic.

I could resolve the issue by highlighting the text I'd like to apply the style to and applying the appropriate style using the Styles and Formatting pod, but then every time I update the Word document, the text would revert.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Please let me know if anything is unclear or if I need to provide additional information.

Thank you!

Rachel

[Peter Grainge]

I am questioning why you want that topic in the help. A TOC in RoboHelp is normally in the left pane and you would not create a topic with the same information for other topics so why for topics created from a link?

Notice that a page number is given. How do you turn to page nn in online help?

If you do want that topic for some reason then go to the CSS and see if defining the WD_TOC 1 and WD_TOC 2 styles helps.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[r2silver]

Thanks for your response, Peter. I do understand that what I'm trying to do is not standard--and probably not best practice for WebHelp. I am following instructions to make the WebHelp function like the website we are using as a model, which  features a TOC for each chapter as a separate page. So I understand that what I'm doing is essentially pounding a square peg into a round hole, but it seems like it should work as long as RoboHelp can pick up the right paragraph styles.

I can eliminate the page numbers pretty easily by choosing to use hyperlinks instead of page numbers in web output (this is an option in Word 2010), but the Hyperlink style is a character style that overlays the paragraph styles TOC 1, TOC 2, etc and suppresses page numbers. While the Hyperlink character style translates with no problem to RoboHelp, those underlying paragraph styles are still not linking up quite right. For the sake of trying to simplify things and address the real problem, I temporarily removed the hyperlinks (thereby including the page numbers) in order to straighten things out. Thank you for pointing out the apparent oversight, though!

What's confusing about the problem is that WD_TOC 1 and WD_TOC 2 are already defined--they just aren't being applied. I can apply them manually, but as soon as I do, the status indicator in the Project Manager pod changes to the yellow triangle with an exclamation point (), indicating that the project is out of sync. As soon as I update the topics, those TOCs revert to having no paragraph styles at all. Does that make sense?

Thanks again for your help!

[Peter Grainge]

Yes it does. There is an option to exclude specifc linked topics from being updated. I cannot look right now but perhaps that would work for you.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[r2silver]

Yes, that might have to be the workaround:apply the paragraph styles manually, and then exclude the topics containing the TOCs from updating. It's not an ideal solution because if the TOCs ever change, I (or whoever receives the project from me, who will probably be even less familiar with RoboHelp) will have to either update the TOCs and then reapply all of the paragraph styles manually, or just manually update the TOC topics. Either way, it's less automation--and less of the benefit of linking the document--than I was hoping for.

Thank you for taking the time to consider the problem and offer suggestions. I'm going to leave the question marked "Not Answered" in case anyone else has ideas, but for now, I'll be manually updating my TOCs.

Thank you!

Rachel