RoboHelp 9 - What does WebHelp Search actually Search

Hi Deb

A fair question. But we first need to clarify exactly what you mean by Search. I say this because sometimes folks talk about the Index as if it were Search. And indeed, they are two separate things.

With the Index, the help author specifies specific keywords by either typing them in manually or by asking RoboHelp to assist (by using the Smart Index Wizard) and the experience for the end user is this. They click the Index tab, then begin typing what they are looking for. As they type, a list of keywords is attempted to dynamically match what is being typed. Often, before they completely type the keyword it appears in the list and off they go.

On the other hand, with Search, the user types the search term in full, then clicks a Go button. At that point the search is performed and candidate files are returned. And yes, typically, Microsoft Word documents, Adobe PDF documents, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and I believe even Microsoft PowerPoint documents will also be searched.

Hope this helps... Rick