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Anonymous

Question

Importing Word 2013 files into existing projects in RH10

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
May 31, 2013
3 replies
6111 views

I've been searching all over help forums trying to figure out how to use Office 2013 with RH10 and the closest I've gotten is the following discussion about generating Help Documentation : http://forums.adobe.com/message/5043919#5043919

However, generating documentation isn't my main concern at the moment. I'm trying to import Word Documents into my project but everytime I attempt to do this I get an error that states: "The Import Word Document Wizard cannot locate a supported version of Microsoft Word. Please install Microsoft Word 2000 or newer." I can avoid this by converting to PDF documents, but that's not my ideal solution at this time.

My office uses 2013, so I would prefer not to downgrade to 2010. Is there any way to avoid downgrading or would it be best to stick with using PDFs instead?

This topic has been closed for replies.

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mcolegro

Participant

I also have this problem. I have only Office 2013 (version 15) on my system and I don't want to install an older version of Office just so I can import Word documents into RH.

I found a workaround for this problem that involves tweaking the registry. When RH performs an import from MSWord, it scans the CurrentUser and LocalMachine registry hives looking for the InstallRoot key for the installed version of MSWord. (I found this by using the tool Process Monitor from Microsoft SystemInternals- it showed all the registry keys that were being read) RH10 starts with version 14 (Word 2010) and works backwards down to version 9 (Word 2000 I think). I have Word 2013 (version 15) installed and thus don't have the registry key that RH is looking for to do the import.

The workaround is to add an "InstallRoot" registry key to one of the versions of MSWord that RH scans, that points to the Word 2013 path. I located "InstallRoot" registry key for Word 2013. InstallRoot contains a string value named "Path" with the value of the install path for Office 15. I then created an InstallRoot key under the Office 14, Word registry section and added the "Path" item with the value of my Office 15 installation.

I found the Office 15 (2013) Word InstallRoot key here: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Word\InstallRoot

I copied the InstallRoot key here: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Word\InstallRoot

***A WORD OF CAUTION. MANUALLY UPDATING THE REGISTRY CAN CAUSE SIGNIFICANT PROBLEMS TO YOUR PC. YOU SHOULD NOT MODIFY THE REGISTRY UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND UNDERSTAND THAT YOU CAN CAUSE YOUR PC TO CRASH, BECOME UNSTABLE OR NOT BOOTABLE.

imagineimage1

Known Participant

THIS IS AWESOME.

Seeing as you appear to be someone who knows what they are doing, I have a question: Have you tried using Dropdown hotspots in your help files? If you have contact me off Adobe at imagineimage at comcast dot net so we can discuss my firms problems with this feature, in prep of making Adobe aware of its clunkiness to see if they can fix it.

Thanks in advance and I'll post back if your suggestion doesn't work and here's why I said that: great if we can get RH to see Office 2013 HOWEVER, is that enough? I mean, doesn't RH have potentially other issues with 2013 over previous versions? I'm thinking just fixing the pointer may not be enough to actually make it work.

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mcolegro

Participant

I wish I could offer you some help, but I am brand new to RH. I just started looking into using it for our documentation and immediately ran into the snag of not being able to import from MS Word 2013. I know enough about software development and the registry to figure out what RH was trying to do and how to work around the issue. Beyond that, RH is all new to me.

As for other issues with RH and Word 2013… I’m speculating here, but I’d be surprised if there were any major issues. The RH import function appears to use the MSWord engine to read the document content, styles, etc. during the import, so the document can be converted. I would be surprised if there was a significant difference between versions of MSWord with regard to that functionality.

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Randiks

Participant

I installed a trial version of Robohelp 10 on a laptop with windows VIsta and Word 2007 The import features worked seamlessly and I was able to generate printed documentation also. I requested my work consider purchasing Robohelp since it is touted as working well with Word, Captivate and Sharepoint. These are tools we are using and excited at Rh potential to create with these tools. The content files I planned to use for the Rh Project are managed on Sharepoint and need to be imported from Word 2013. As Kelseyrf discussed - these files not accessible via RH import or link feature. PDF files will import. Like the previous writer Rh does not recognize that Word 2013 is installed. Also working in an Office 365 environment. Our IT staff installed the patch mentioned, but it did not help. I'm running out of time to learn how to use Robohelp and complete my project on time. We hoped to benefit from the Rh feature allowing for easy updating when files are frequently revised. It seems there is not an option other than to step away from Word 2013 and ask to have my computer rolled back to a Word 2010 version. Is this correct?

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

See reply 4. Importing worked on a machine with 2013 and 2010. Would expect linking to work too on machine with both but unable to test right now.

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Randiks

Participant

Thank you. Yes, I read your reply #4 which gives me hope. I’ll ask our IT shop to load 2010 and give that a try tomorrow. I wondered if there were any other comments floating around that I missed. It seems as if this is the solution until Adobe provides a fix for Word 2013.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

The first thing to try is saving the Word document to be compatible with an earlier version of Word.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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A

Anonymous

Yes, I have tried that and still no dice.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Hmm! I cannot test until Monday when I have access to a machine with Word 2013. However my guess is I will get the same error as Rh is likely checking the version of Word first.

The machine has both Word 2010 and Word 2013 installed and I expect that when Word 2013 is the last version used I will get the error and when Word 2010 is the last version used it will work OK.

Your only solution may be a dual install. When doing things with Rh that involve Word, you run Word 2010 first. It will go through a little configuration routine as it will when you next run Word 2013 but it's no big deal.

I will post back next week.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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