Automatic conversion from Robohelp to Powerpoint

[Guest]

Hi, forum friends.

In my environment, the on-line help files are produced in Robohelp HTML (RH8, soon to be upgraded to RH9). Each topic has a rigid format: first there is a summary consisting of bullet points, then there is a horizontal line, then there is a text section explaining the topic in detail, and finally there is a "Related Topics" button.

The same topics are usually re-used for training materials. The summary bullet points become PowerPoint slides, and the text section becomes the presenter's narration (stored in the Notes section of each slide).

My question is: how can I efficiently convert the Robohelp files into Powerpoint slides? Right now, it is a cut-and-paste task, and changes (which happen frequently) have to be manually updated in both formats. This is time-consuming and error-prone.

The narration text (which goes in the Powerpoint notes) is not quite identical to the text in the Robohelp topic, but they are close enough that Robohelp's conditional text should handle the differences.

Ultimately, I would like to be able to make my changes in Robohelp and then "push a button" (i.e. go through a few simple steps that don't involve any editing) and get a new set of PowerPoint slides.

I have only been able to identify one possible route for this conversion, and it sounds like it would be painful to set up: publish the Robohelp files to the DocBook XML format, convert that to the PowerPoint internal XML format using XSLT (or some other converter), unzip the PowerPoint file, replace the slide text and the notes text, and re-zip the PowerPoint.

In searching the archives, I see that someone asked a similar question in 2008, and the suggestion was to capture the Robohelp material using a screen-capture utility. That doesn't work in my case--the results are poor for the bullet points, and it doesn't work at all for the narration.

Is there a simpler way than the XML conversion approach outlined above? Is the whole idea crazy? I await your input.

Thanks,

-- George

[Captiv8r]

Hi George

Wow, this is the second question I've seen today that involves RoboHelp and PowerPoint. That's pretty unusual around here. LOL

I can't really think of an easy way to accomplish this. Mostly, we think in terms of importing content from other applications such as PowerPoint to RoboHelp. But you want to go the other way around.

Hmmm, in thinking about this I'm scratching my bald head and wondering if you might have some success using the following approach:

Output your help system as Printed Documentation. That should be able to grab the content and you could use Conditional Build Tags to control what gets included. Then once you have a Word document, perhaps there is a way that Microsoft provides that allows easily converting the Word document to PowerPoint?

This is pure speculation at this point and just thinking off the top of my head. But it wouldnt' surprise me in the least to discover that Microsoft has a method in place for doing just that. Actually, I just did a quick Google and there seems to be several articles explaining how that can happen!

Best of luck to you... Rick

Oh, and if you get it sorted, please post back to let us know the outcome!

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[Guest]

Thanks, Rick. Your suggestion is a helpful one, and it may work for some people who need to convert Robohelp to PowerPoint, but I don't think it will work for me.

The Word to Powerpoint conversion depends on using outline styles in Word, so I would have to figure out how to get the Robohelp bullet points to become Word outline styles. But even if I did that, I can't see how to get the remaining Robohelp text into the Powerpoint "Notes" field. The Microsoft conversion won't do that, and my search didn't turn up any third-party ones that do it either.

-- George

[Willam van Weelden]

Hi,

In addition to Rick's suggestion, it should also be possible to import HTML files into PowerPoint: http://tiplet.com/tip/how-to-convert-html-and-flash-files-to-powerpoint/

As I read this, you should be able to export to XHTML with an XML output SSL and import the result into PPT. Dropdowns will probably not work so you may want to exclude those with CBT.

Greet,

Willam

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply, Willam.

The link you provided refers to a technique that only works with very old versions of PowerPoint. I did a Google search for similar HTML import techniques that will work for PowerPoint 2007 (which is the version I have), but I can't find any that will populate the PowerPoint Notes field (which is required for my application).

It is beginning to look as if the process I outlined in my initial post (export to DocBook XML --> convert to PowerPoint internal XML --> unzip PowerPoint file --> replace slide text XML and notes XML --> restore PowerPoint file) is my only hope.

-- George

[Willam van Weelden]

Bummer, too bad. Good luck with your workflow.

Greet,

Willam