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July 2, 2006
Answered

Weird { XE "" \* MERGEFORMAT } showing in Word generated document

  • July 2, 2006
  • 7 replies
  • 4767 views
Using RoboHelp HTML 5.0. When I publish my help system as a Word document, I am getting dozens of weird looking imbedded fields / codes in my document.

{ XE "" \* MERGEFORMAT}{ XE "" \* MERGEFORMAT}

Also see attached .jpg example. There is nothing weird or odd about the information trying to be converted. The style information is very basic. These topics have been sent to Word before. We update our User Guide once a quarter and it worked 3 months ago. This generation is occurring on a new machine with a recent installation of RoboHelp (last machine had a hard drive crash).

Ideas???

http://www.thinmind.com/Images/Help/RoboHelpHTMLToWordProblem.jpg
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Correct answer
Thanks for the idea! Turning off the Word formats worked. The oddest thing, is with the Word format symbols showing....Adobe Distiller would not generate a .PDF file. Adobe Distiller would bomb out when it hit the first { XE...} thing. I did not realize these were word symbols. Thanks so much!!! Have a nice 4th!

7 replies

March 29, 2018

I had this issue in Word 2010 and it was caused by the setting menu File - Options, dialog Word options, item Advanced, section Print, option Print field codes instead of their values.

I have no idea how or when it was checked and even didn't know it existed. But it clearly does what it says.

Inspiring
January 25, 2007
You can also click the Paragraph icon on the toolbar. It looks like a reversed
"P."
Participant
March 19, 2007
I have the same problemt as described, but it does not disappear when deselecting field codes. I have investigated it further and it seems to be related to index. If a topic is referred to by an index the field code will appear in the generated Word document.

My problem is that sometimes the field code is listed with a topic heading and when this occur it does not look correctly when I create a PDF from the Word file - the heading number does not show. Sometimes the field code is listed within the topic and it comes out correctly in the PDF. I fail to see how/why the index reference differ and I seem to fail to remove the field codes as described. Help!!!

Kind regards
Rikke Nymand
Inspiring
March 19, 2007
Rikke

Can you check your Word Options to ensure that you're not printing Hidden Text or Field Objects? Select Tools > Options > Print tab and check the 'Include with document' section of the screen.

Regards

Kathy

January 25, 2007
Cool. Got it. Thanks for the quick reply!
Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 25, 2007
In Word go to Tools | Options | View tab | deselect field codes

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January 25, 2007
Can you describe how you turn off the word formats and/or symbols described above? I'm having the same issue. Thanks.
Inspiring
July 3, 2006
Hi again. I just had another thought - have you checked the View options in Word to see if the Hidden Text option has been selected. The fields look like index marking to me. If you've marked keywords in your topics they will be added to the document as index entries.

Regards

Inspiring
July 3, 2006
Hi there frustrated99!

What happens when you turn the symbols off in Word?

Regards

Correct answer
July 3, 2006
Thanks for the idea! Turning off the Word formats worked. The oddest thing, is with the Word format symbols showing....Adobe Distiller would not generate a .PDF file. Adobe Distiller would bomb out when it hit the first { XE...} thing. I did not realize these were word symbols. Thanks so much!!! Have a nice 4th!