Known Participant

Question

External Link through Contents

Forum|Forum|19 years ago
July 24, 2006
7 replies
1451 views

As you can tell I am extremely new to this and was unable to locate it in the Book. But is there a way to link to a external file? I know how to do it from within a page, but I can not figure out how to do it through the contents section without causing the red x to appear over the file name

James

HTML

This topic has been closed for replies.

J

jar92380Author

Known Participant

just verifing. Before deployment it is okay to delete those files. Also do I need this files for deployment whgdata, whdata, whxdata?

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Absolutely fine unless you are a bit pickie and want it to work! Don't delete anything from the output, it is all there for a reason.

Use the menu (bottom right) to mark the Best Answer or Highlight particularly useful replies. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here.

J

jar92380Author

Known Participant

okay here is another question. There are three different files with the same name and extension. there is index.htm, index_csh.htm, and index_rhc.htm
Does it matter which one is used?

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

The filenames start the same to be correct. If you are asking the question I think you are asking, index.htm is your start page. RH needs the others but you don't point to them.

Use the menu (bottom right) to mark the Best Answer or Highlight particularly useful replies. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

What you trying to do makes sense and either of the methods that have been outlined will do the job for you.

As I have indicated, I have prepared a demo project showing both methods. eMail me if you cannot get things working from what has been posted here.

Click my username to email.

Use the menu (bottom right) to mark the Best Answer or Highlight particularly useful replies. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here.

J

jar92380Author

Known Participant

actually I tried what Peter had recommended and the TOC is not picking up the page. Any more suggestions

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

HTML help is usually taken to mean a CHM file. I think you mean you are creating webhelp?

If you are it seems to be straightforward from a test I just tried.

In the TOC click the New Page icon.

Click Link to and select Web Address.

Delete the default http:// and enter the path from where the webhelp will reside to where the target file will be. You can either enter the relative path or the full path with the server name but not using a drive letter. If that is not going to be the same for all your users, then you have a problem.

Remember to use forward slashes.

I just tried it locally and it works fine. The topic will show with a red cross in the project but the TOC will work in the output. It will have a different icon to other pages.

Hope that helps.

Use the menu (bottom right) to mark the Best Answer or Highlight particularly useful replies. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here.

Captiv8r

Legend

Tsk tsk tsk!

Nobody even mentioned the venerable redirect topic!

Cheers all... Rick

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

What do you mean by "the TOC is not picking up the page"?

Are you saying the page does not appear in the TOC?

Are you saying it appears but clicking it does not take you to the required page?

I suspect you mean the latter. First create a new project and generate the output to your hard disk. In that output create a TOC entry in the way I described so the link is perhaps c:\test.htm. That will prove to you the idea works. After that it is more likely the path was not correct in your main project.

The alternative is to include a blank topic in your project and point to that in your TOC. In the blank topic include a redirect (how is in Rick's Tips and Tricks) to the external topic you want. However, the path to go in the redirect will be the same as the path I am describing to you so if you cannot get that to work, I am not sure that will get you any further forward.

Nonetheless try those things in a simple one topic project where you can more easlly see and test things.

Come back if you still cannot get it to work.

Use the menu (bottom right) to mark the Best Answer or Highlight particularly useful replies. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here.

J

jar92380Author

Known Participant

well actually im not going to the a .chm file its going to be html. The file is located in a top level folder and the file is another HTML file.

J

johnmccallum

Inspiring

James,

Ahh, this is much trickier. Not only will RoboHelp draw a red X through your entry, the compiler will erase it. I haven't figured out how to trick the TOC. When I tried to do something like this so the users could have their own custom page - an external HTML file - I ended up creating a holder topic (accessible from the TOC) that contained a link to the external page.

Perhaps this can be called automatically. I'll try a few things.

John

J

johnmccallum

Inspiring

James,

When you say "external file" do you mean a topic from another .chm file or opening another file type like a .pdf document or a Word file?

I'm a bit out of date on RoboHelp, so your version might not work like this but if you right click on the TOC entry with the red X and select "Properties" it will allow you to select the proper link. From "Destination" select "Remote Topic" and connect to your external topic.

John

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded