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Question

RoboHelp 9 WebHelp Publish don't see TOC/links

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
November 15, 2021
5 replies
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We still use RoboHelp 9 and I usually have HTML (.chm) file output. My manager wants to use WebHelp for a project but I cannot get the left TOC/navigation links to appear; the pane is empty. I have WebHelp as the Primary Layout, but on the Navigation section, most of the lower checkboxes are disabled including the Show Navigation Pane Link in Topics. I can't see how to enable these checkboxes. TIA for you help!

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Also keep in mind cost. You get the whole app with RoboHelp and a subscription keeps you up to date and can be tax efficient. That depends on where you are, check it with your finance people.

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

I haven't even heard of it. I very much doubt it has the functionality of RoboHelp or Flare. I think you will have to Google Help Smith. Can it import your existing RoboHelp project would be the first thing to look and if it can, how good is the output?

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See www.grainge.org for free Authoring and RoboHelp Information

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

The upgrade process has been improved through the various 2019 and 2020 upgrades and I think 2019 Classic would be more readily available if it were still a recommended step. I think upgrading RoboHelp 9 could well have issues even going the 2019 Classic route as the code is so old.

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deniseh47762385Author

Known Participant

Thanks everyone for your input. We've been needing to upgrade our documentation platform for some time. I think we may be looking at RH alternatives too. Anyone have experience with HelpSmith?

A

Amebr

Community Expert

I'm not sure if this advice has changed, but at one point the advice was to upgrade RH9 and 10 projects to RH2019 Classic first (to fix a bunch of quirks in those earlier versions). If that's still the advice, I think you need to request RH2019 through support using the email address here: https://helpx.adobe.com/robohelp/kb/robohelp-downloads.html

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

RoboHelp 9 is a very old version and I think your manager needs to be warned that the webhelp it produces is highly unlikely to work in a modern browser.

I'm guessing you have Pure HTML selected as that does disable some of the options below. I think you are saying the TOC pane is blank, correct? I can't recall whether or not that was one of the browser compatibility issues so try with one of the sample projects.

________________________________________________________
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deniseh47762385Author

Known Participant

I have it set for DHTML>Pure HTML. The only difference using Pure HTML is the 'Synchronize Table of Contents Automatically' is disabled. The 'Add Breadcrumbs Links' can be checked but none of the other ones below it.

I tried to open the Index.htm with Chrome and Edge.

We may have to just convert the .chm to WebHelp using another tool but I was hoping to use RoboHelp. It did it a few years ago for a Linux release.

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

You can definitely use RH to create HTML that works on all modern browsers - you just can't do it with RH9 - that version is too old and doesn't have the fixes that were required to keep up with changes the browsers made for increased security.

Download the trial of RH2020 and upgrade a copy of your RH9 project to play with it - be warned though that the UI has completely changed & that WebHelp doesn't really exist anymore - it's just HTML5 with the responsiveness turned off. See the About RH sample project & Peter's excellent site about the changes to RH2020.

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