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Joanna_Sciortino
Joanna_Sciortino
Known Participant
November 6, 2013
Question

Importing a Topic in RoboHelp

  • November 6, 2013
  • 1 reply
  • 972 views

My question is about creating a topic and saving it on the hard drive location, and later Importing that topic to a Shared drive where the remaining topics are located.  When doing this can the Imported topic be updated in the shared drive?  Does it then save the updates to the original location (hard drive)? Or is it best to create and save the topics in it's final location?

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    1 reply

    RoboColum_n_
    RoboColum_n_
    Legend
    November 6, 2013

    Hi Joanna.

    Can I first ask why you want to do this? If you have multiple writers each working on the same files, it maybe best to implement a source control solution. Then again if you have people (e.g. subject matter experts) writing the content and you collating it, maybe using the Adobe Technical Communication Suite is the answer.

    Anyway to answer your original question....

    You can import any topic file into a RH project. It would be best if it was created in RH but it does not have to be. You can import any .HTM file. In your scenario there is no link between the local and shared version of the topic. If you import the topic from the shared location and change it in RH, it will be out of sync with your local version. You'd also need to ensure the topic was imported into your project. Simply placing it in the project directory (shared or otherwise) does not mean it is included in the project.

    One final thing. Only RH10 supports running a project on a network drive. Whilst it is possible to run a RH project on a shared drive, I would advise against it unless you have that version.

    Joanna_Sciortino
    Joanna_SciortinoAuthor
    Known Participant
    November 6, 2013

    Thank you for your response.

    FYI - I am working in RH10.

    To clarify and hopefully answer your question - The shared drive is a Network drive, but only accessable by specific individuals.  There is another person that is in the same project file. When I was working from home one day and discovered the hard way that using RoboHelp from a romote location with VPN access is not very effective and I end up corrupting my file.  Was able to recover it, but have not done it since.

    So, when working from home I created a topic in RoboHelp from my own drive on the PC and once in the office I imported it into the shared drive folder.  I had noticed that when I was on the shared drive for the topic that I had imported and made a change I received a warning message.  Since then I have not created topics on my pc drive and then imported it in to the shared drive.

    RoboColum_n_
    RoboColum_n_
    Legend
    November 6, 2013

    You should not get any warning message so long as RH knows about the topic file. This means using the File > Import > HTML File menu option. Using this updates the internal database so that RH knows where the file is. Once you have done this on the shared drive, you can update the topic locally and copy it back using Windows. So long as the project is closed when you do this, the update should be there when you next open it in RoboHelp.

    It may be best for you to use a source control application. This would enable you and the other user to check out a topic, thereby effectively locking anyone else from changing it, until you check your change back in.

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