Can't map OL or UL to dotx styles for Word output

[KarenMinOR]

Hello all,

I'm using RH 2022.3.93 on Windows and I'm trying to export my doc to a Word output preset. The problem I'm having is that on the preset > Word tab, there's no [obvious] way to map my UL or OL elements to a style in the .dotx file. Neither are showing up in the Style Mapping table's paragraph tab (or any other tab). The RH files have both styles, and the styles are defined in the dotx file and the Word template's .css files. The resulting Word file makes my numbered and bulleted lists the "Normal" style. I'd rather not have to change them manually. Is there a trick to this I'm not seeing?

Thanks!

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

According to Peter's site (https://www.grainge.org/RoboHelp_Tour/rh2022/outputs/outputs_word.htm) you should have a mapping table displayed to set RH Styles to Word Styles.

[Peter Grainge]

Lists are different. I will post something over the weekend.

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

[KarenMinOR]

Sweet! Thanks, Peter 🙂

[Peter Grainge]

Lists have always been a problem, both in Classic and the New UI versions. The reason is simple but not widely understood.

HTML uses the <p> tag and <h1> etc tags and Word uses those styles so that they can be mapped. HTML uses <ol> and <ul> tags for the two basic types of list. Word does not have a list style. I hear you saying it does, it's on the Word toolbar. They are not list styles in the HTML sense, they are paragraph styles with numbers or bullets applied.

I had several exchanges over this issue with Adobe and I will go back and check where we got to. I believe I am right in saying that RoboHelp just does it's best to convert them nicely. Also it works better if you use RoboHelp's list styles as supplied.

Let me check this is still correct.

________________________________________________________

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

[Peter Grainge]

I had in mind a case where lists and tables were an issue that I worked on with Adobe. However, looking into this some more it was importing rather than "exporting".

Could you either let me have the project or a cut down version that has your setup, templates and so on? If you can, then see the Contact page on my site and send the project as instructed there. Do make sure you include a link to this thread and please do not email the project direct.

________________________________________________________

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

[Amebr]

Numbering in Word has been weird forever. If you look at the Styles panel in Word there are no list styles available to select. You can see that the "list" styles all have a paragraph symbol indicating that they are paragraph styles.

The list icons in the toolbar are more like meta definitions, that define the list as a whole and what style to use for each level. In addition, the way these templates are stored is different per user, I think. It's this split that causes the massive numbering issues encountered when using numbering within Word and transferring docs between people. (You know when you get a document and the bullets are a weird, ugly 3D triagular symbol? The original user is not likely to have actually selected that - it was automatically changed based on hidden template coordinates for your instance of Word on that computer.) Do note that this is me translating issues that don't even seem to be understood by MS, given they haven't been fixed in over 25 years, so some of the details may not be 100% technically accurate.

Using the VBA programming language, I could never find a way to reliably select the correct list template in one document on my own computer, let alone do it reliably for other PCs or users. Maybe Adobe's programmers have more insider knownledge (they are definitely better programmers than me) but it's possible they ran in to the same issues and this is why it's not possible to select one of the "List Styles" that it's possible to create in Word.

[KarenMinOR]

Thanks much for the assistance, all. It seems the RH to Word output isn't going to work seamlessly without a great deal of effort and/or wheel spinning. For now, outputting to PDF and using Acrobat to convert to Word is the easiest route, though not ideal.

[Peter Grainge]

@KarenMinOR PDF to Word depends on what you want to do with the Word doc. If anyone is going to be editing it, there's a bear trap. Most PDF to Word software writes the document using inline styling rather than Word styles. It will look great until someone tries to apply say a new H1 and it will be nothing like what appears to be H1 in the document.

Acrobat DC does a pretty good job but still not perfect if editing is a thing.

I'm happy to take a look at a project to see if I can come up with anything.

________________________________________________________

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

[Peter Grainge]

I just set up a simple test and neither HTML lists nor Word list styles appear in mapping, whether or not such styles exist in the CSS or Word.

What I did find was that in the New UI a CSS list with square bullets did not come through in Word, whether or not a Word template was used. Using the same Word template in Classic, again there was no mapping but the square bullet got applied in the Word output.

I'll let you know if I get anything more back from Adobe.

________________________________________________________

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

[KarenMinOR]

Thank you so much, Peter! Sorry I couldn't put together a project for you -- I'm deep in a release cycle at the moment. 🙂 Glad you were able to see the issue tho. I hope Adobe can include some fancy coding footwork in a future release. 😄

I'm using the Word version for QA doc reviews because PDF output on a shared drive doesn't allow commenting the way Word docs do. When I convert to Word from PDF, sometimes the formatting gets wonky and reviewers comment on it, so I thought if I could just export to Word, that'd solve my problem. Wishful thinking, apparently! 😄

Thanks again!

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Why not use the Review function? See https://www.grainge.org/RoboHelp_Tour/rh2022/reviewing/reviewing.htm 

[KarenMinOR]

Oh, I wish I could! But without the ability to order topics and include conditions, the review function is useless to our team. If/When Adobe adds those functions (I've requested them!), I'll be all over that! 😄

[Peter Grainge]

Try adding your list style to the content.css file in the RoboHelp template.

________________________________________________________

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