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C
Chris_Dant__
Participant
May 8, 2019
Question

Publish Date in a Variable - RoboHelp 2019

  • May 8, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 868 views

I'd like to display the publish date (taken from the system, not typed) of a piece unobtrusively on a page in a RoboHelp 2019 piece as a way to better support reviewers. I didn't see a way to get any sort of date in a variable in Help though. Any ideas? Is it not possible (yet)?

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2 replies

Captiv8r
Captiv8r
Legend
May 8, 2019

I'm going to crawl way out on this shaky little limb and say it's basically impossible at this point. The silly variable editor appears in a pop up window and as near as I'm able to discern, it has focus and you can only type or paste into it. So I tried adding a field to a topic as Amebr has shown. And sure, it added to the topic just fine. I figured at that point it would just be a matter of copying the field and pasting into that variable dialog. Nope.

It DID seem to paste, but as near as I can tell it only pasted the value and not the actual field.

Cheers... Rick

A
Community Expert
AmebrCommunity Expert
Community Expert
May 8, 2019

But you could add it in a master page footer, then it would be on every page.

And if the "Auto-update this field" checkbox actually works, it should theoretically update every time you generate. Or at least every time you update and save the page?

Disclaimer: Thought experiment only. No guarantee this will work.

    A
    Community Expert
    AmebrCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 8, 2019

    And it is managed somehow, because when I try to type in it, I get a "It is read only content" warning message at the bottom of the window.

    A
    Community Expert
    AmebrCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 8, 2019

    Assuming RH 2019 New, you can insert fields which include a date. I haven't played with how these work though.

    C
    Chris_Dant__Author
    Participant
    May 8, 2019

    For my example, this would work to put the publish date and time on a page in the output. All I need is for it to be someplace unobtrusive but visible so that reviewers and users can always reference it.

    It would also be good to have a set of tokens or symbols like %PubDate% or %PubTime% that could be used in variable definition value fields and then displayed as variables anywhere in the piece.

    Thanks Amebr​ and Captiv8r

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