RoboHelp unable to start Microsoft Word

Okay, here's what causes the problem and how to workaround it.

Each of the document files uses a <different.dot> template file. Any template other than RoboHELP.dot causes the problem described. Even a copy of RoboHELP.dot saved under a different name and then attached to a document will cause the failure.

The workaround is as follows:

1. Outside RH, open each .doc file in Word and attach template RoboHELP.dot. Save the file.

2. Inside RH, open each .doc file (under topics) and then close it. You will get a message that says document needs to be saved. Click Yes-to-all. The document will close and save.

When this has been done for all documents, the problem goes away. (It actually goes away one document at a time as you do it.)

There may be a simpler way, but this is the first one that I found.

Thanks again to those who helped.

Jim

HI Peter,

Thanks for the suggestions. I have determined that there is a template file missing. I will do some experiments and see if I can get around this by assigning a different template or saving an empty copy of one of the files as the missing template. (Should work unless there is a macro in the template that is not also in the file.)

While I'm sure there would be no problem sending you a copy of the project, it would be in violation of my contract. If I am unable to solve this soon, I will request permission from the client. In the mean time, I have reimported the files to a new project and it seems to work okay with formatting (and template in general) problems.

I will let you know what happens.

Thanks again.

Jim

You will, I'm sure, have tried deleting the .rtf. An unsynchronised Word pane is one of RH for Word's occasional quirks and the 'Unable to open...' message can be a clue to this.

Hi Peter,

If I understand your post correctly:

1. Only this project has caused problems. (However I have been using RoboHTML for the last three years, and this is the first RoboHelp for Word project in that time.)

2. I started with Word 2000 and was forced to update to Word 2003 to get RoboHelp to open the files at all. Attempting to open the files and resave them as Word 2000 didn't help.

3. When I open a new project and import the .doc files from this project, they come in more-or-less okay (template problems), and then I can access everything properly, i.e., RH recognizes that the file is open in Word and I can change topics and files in the RH pane -- just a lot of stuff to clean up. (I'm trying to get the missing template file in case it has macros in it.)

4. The zip on this thing is 2.3 MB. (It is proprietary, however, so I don't think I could send you a copy.)

I hope I've answered your question and provided some useful information.

Thanks.

Jim (firebird.jmw)

Hi Rick,

You're absolutely right about Blue Sky. In the beginning, RoboHelp was not the best product, but it had better marketing on the enterprize level so I wound up having to use it.

Hi Peter,

(By the way, this is a stand-alone machine on a home network and I am the only user for this particular machine. I run from a renamed admin account.)

The Help menu indicates that there are no available updates. I have checked everything on your site that seemed to have ANY relevance at all. (Thanks for a great site.) I didn't find anything under either print or install that helped, but I may not have thought how you might index this problem. I have also checked all the topics in this forum without finding anything on this particular problem.

In the mean time, the overlap seems to be gone (i.e., the window position is now as it should be), but I'm still locked out of the RoboHelp pane whenever Word is open (by RH) and I still get the "unable to start Microsoft Word" error message after I close Word. RH doesn't seem to be getting the message that Word has opened the requested file.

Thanks for the effort you are putting in on this.

Hi Peter,

I have been using RoboHelp since it was Waxtech, eHelp, Macromedia, and now Adobe.

This is just a transferred project from another writer at another company. I had to uninstall RH first, install Word 2003, update Word 2003 with service packs, and then reinstall RH 5.0.1. (I have been using Word 2000. Install CD is already 5.0.1 for Word 2003.)

This seems to be something peculiar to this system as I have been told the same project works okay on another system. Some communication between Word and RH seems to be getting lost, possibly due to a wrong registry setting. Not much chance of finding it here short of doing a complete reinstall of the OS, so I'm hoping somebody else might have some ideas.

Thanks.

Welcome to the forum.

You say the project is new to you which makes me wonder if you are a new user to the installation of RH? If it was installed for someone else on the PC and you have now inherited that PC, RH needs to be uninstalled and reinstalled with your logon.

There's a topic on my site about that. Click here.