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Question

Variables: How to add expanded text and insert hyperlinks

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
September 23, 2022
4 replies
204 views

In RH 2020, how do you add expanding text to a variable and then make the expanding text a link?

This topic has been closed for replies.

A

Amebr

Community Expert

It seemed to work for me with RH2020.8 (make sure you are up to date with patches). If you have the first version of RH2020 there's a bug that means you'll need to manually download the latest patch, but after that the update menu should work correctly.

I created a snippet containing the text "APHT-00". I selected that text and applied expanding text. For the text I entered "A Phorm Hyper Text". Then I selected that text and linked to a topic. Then I inserted that snippet into a topic. When I generated I could click on APHT-00 to display the expanding text, then click on the expanding text to jump to the linked topic.

A

Amebr

Community Expert

Oh I should say I also assumed you're using the variables like I am in Classic, to single-source repeated inline content, rather than as a method for providing different values in different output. If you do want to use the actual variable set functionality, then snippets don't support that. However you can achieve something like it using conditions.

L

Lenny2626775471rsAuthor

Participant

Thank you both for getting back to me!

I tried creating a form as a snippet and it does not seem to work. When I test it by clicking on the form number and/or the hyperlink on the expanded text disappears.

See my answer from above for some context:

"This was something we were able to do in RH 2015 and RH 2019 classic. For example, we could have multiple references to a form number as fixed text where a user could click the expanded text to display the form title and from the form title, click a link to a resource document regarding the form. This was all set up with a user-defined variable for each form so that if we needed to edit the form number, the form title, or the link, we could do just update the variable and have to apply to all references of that form. We are not finding this functionality in RH 2020."

L

Lenny2626775471rsAuthor

Participant

Thank you for the suggestion of the snippet. We had been using a variable to apply expanded text to a form number so that clicking it would display the form title and then we had a link to a resource document from title (the variable allowed us to do this in one place for all references to the same form). Since the variable no longer allows us to add a link, the snippet may be the answer. It appears that we can have expanded text or a link, but not both, so there are still some limitations. is this your understanding? @Peter Grainge CCing you too 😃

A

Amebr

Community Expert

Snippets can contain formatting and you can insert them inline, rather than as separate paragraphs now, so I think snippets are what you want.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Only text can be entered into a variable.

What's the aim behind this? Maybe there's another way of achieving the objective.

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My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

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L

Lenny2626775471rsAuthor

Participant

this was something we were able to do in RH 2015 and RH 2019 classic. For example, we could have multiple references to a form number as fixed text where a user could click the expanded text to display the form title and from the form title, click a link to a resource document regarding the form. This was all set up with a user-defined variable for each form so that if we needed to edit the form number, the form title, or the link, we could do just update the variable and have to apply to all references of that form. We are not finding this functionality in RH 2020.

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