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R
RoboFan
Inspiring
November 7, 2019
Question

RoboHelp 2019: Conditional PDF "baggage files"?

  • November 7, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 392 views

Running RH2019.9 new.

 

We have a number of legacy release notes in PDF format. We generate two versions of our help project: private/internal and public/external. I'd like to include these PDF files in the private/internal version, but exclude them when I generate the public/external version - likely using conditional build tags. However, I'm not sure this functionality exists. So, is there a way to add/import these PDF files into a RH2019 project and then apply CBTs to them to control their inclusion when generating help output? 

 

I have a potential workaround if the preferred option doesn't work, though it's not perfect: use a build tag on the topic (or content) that contains the links to the PDF files in question, and then remove the switch to include PDF files in search when generating the output. The problem with this is that it'll exclude other PDF files that we want public/external to be able to access via search. 

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2 replies

R
RoboFanAuthor
Inspiring
November 7, 2019

Thank you, Peter! 

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 7, 2019

2019 new does not support the import of PDFs as topics. What you can do is add the file as a baggage file and create a link to it.

 

  1. In the Contents Panel create a link to the PDF. Right click and select Link > Link File.
  2. Go to your TOC and add the linked file.  That is how baggage files are added in 2019. If you don't want users to see that in the TOC, tick Hide in Output. That allows the file to be uploaded but without the user seeing it in the TOC.
  3. In a topic create a normal link to the baggage file.
  4. For outputs where you don't want the PDF included, tag every TOC/topic reference and use an expression to exclude that tag.

www.grainge.org

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