Participant

Question

Importing an index from a [very] old Robohelp project

Forum|Forum|21 days ago
June 25, 2026
5 replies
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Folks,

I have a very old Robohelp project (created in the 1990s I think- maybe early naughties) which I have updated to 2026 version; I can compile it to a single help file with a contents tab and search tab.

However, the index is proving to be a problem.

The old project has a massive index file which I can open in a text editor (.hhk file) and I can see it is in HTML format.

If I stumble around, not really understanding what I am doing and put some links in to create an index in RH2026 it creates an output file as an idx file which looks like it is XML and a totally different format. I cannot see where the information that creates that idx file in RH2026 lives.

I would have hoped that you could take that hhk file from the old Robohelp project and use it to create the index for the RH2026, but having spent days trying this I cannot make it work.

All the very old web pages are practically the same, just a few tweaks to bring them up to modern HTML standard, but all the human readable text inside it is identical, so we really want to take that original old index and use it in RH2026. It’s a MASSIVE amount of work to create that index file, there surely must be a way to import a 1990s/early 2000s RH index file into an RH2026 project?

Many thanks.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

2019 version is out of support from Adobe.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Normally I would have responded that the index is a different animal in the new UI. Before you could have multiple files, now it's one file only. The conversion gets handled by Robohelp as @Jeff_Coatsworth has explained.

However, it now transpires you are upgrading from a very old version. I hope the post @Jeff_Coatsworth has found helps.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

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Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

See this thread for the same issue of converting a REALLY old RH project -

DiBoscoAuthor

Participant

Thanks, that does look helpful, but they [Adobe] are ignoring my request for the 2019 version. Is that normal? Do they take weeks to reply usually?

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

Possibly - have a look around in your Adobe account - there might be a link to 2019 Classic in there.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

See https://www.grainge.org/RoboHelp_Tour/rh2022/toc_index_glossary/index.htm

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

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

DiBoscoAuthor

Participant

I’m not understanding how this helps me import an old hhk into a newer project, sorry to be slow.

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

An index part of an old Classic project would have been upgraded when the project was converted to the New UI format. Did this not happen when the project was upgraded? See https://www.grainge.org/RoboHelp_Tour/rh2022/introduction/upgrading.htm for that section and the changes.
btw - from what I can see, the .hhk file is XML (at least in RH10 & 11) not HTML.

DiBoscoAuthor

Participant

I don’t think it was converted per-se. It was given to me with the files there in a project, all of which were showing both errors and warning. I went through them all, took me a week, and I fixed all those issues. Hundreds of HTML files that needed fixing.

What I was handed was all the original files in the old structure which also had another subdirectory called Project Container which I assume, but don’t know for sure, was someone’s attempt at updating the project. It is this directory in why I had all the HTML files I painstakingly fixed.

I have since also tried taking all those and starting a new project with it.

These are the few first lines of the existing, ancient, hhk file, which I’ll bet is way earlier version than RH10:

<html>

<object type="text/site properties">
<param name="SiteType" value="index">
<param name="Font" value="Verdana,8">
</object>

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