Inspiring

Answered

Existing Word files into Robhelp 2022

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
February 23, 2024
8 replies
2574 views

Hello. I'm on the struggle bus and am needing some help and clarification. I'm new to Robohelp. I have hundreds of Word files that I need to bring into Robohelp. Ideally, I would like to import all of the files and folders and subfolders into RH 2022 at once. Is that even possible, I guess is my question? If I right click in the contents panel, I see a menu that has import file, folder and Word Document options. If I choose folder and go out and select my folder that contains all of the structure and subfolders and Word files, it brings it into my contents panel and I can expand all of the folders and see my sub folder and what looks like my "files" or topics, but when I double click on the file (or topic to use RH terminology) it is blank on the right hand side. What am I doing wrong? I don't know when to use import folder or import word document or link folder or link file. I'm thoroughly confused because the way my brain thinks this should work is not the way it's working and I can't figure it out. Any help would be so appreciated. Thank you.

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Correct answer JenniR_12

Just to be clear, this is a user to User forum.

Using Import Word Document (note singular) I couldn't select more than one document at a time. You can try that for yourself.

Before making final decisions, you can try Support but I think they will tell you the same.

See https://helpx.adobe.com/contact/enterprise-support.other.html#robohelp for your Adobe Support options. The email link tcssup@adobe.com is recommended as it reaches a team dedicated to Technical Communication Suite products including RoboHelp.

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

Importing multiple Word files in Robohelp 2022 cannot be done. Robohelp 2019 Classic and prior versions had this cabpability and they removed it in the new UI. Thank you all for the information. I stepped away from the project for just a little bit and am now back to trying to figure it all out again. Peter, your Robohelp 2022 help files has been extremely valuable. Thank you.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Jennifer_Rh and Jennifer_PE?

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Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

OLDJenniferDONTUSE

Known Participant

Looks like it's updated now, Peter. I guess I'll leave this open bc i marked it a while back with correct answer but I someone else responded in the last day or so. I'm going to leave it alone from here. Thanks for letting me know about the 2 profiles. I'll be posting from the other from here on out.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

It's more than two pictures. You seem to have two profiles. If you click the username of each, you get two lists of topics.

I suggest you go into whichever one you will use in the future and change the name to JenniferXXX where XXX is an alpha string. That way we can recognise your posts and run for cover. 🙂

________________________________________________________

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Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

OLDJenniferDONTUSE

Known Participant

Ha!! I can't be as stealthy if I just have 1 profile, Peter 🙂 How in the WORLD did that happen? I'll go in and fix it. I would like to shorten my username, too. I think I saw where we can do that. Thank you for letting me know. I honestly don't know how that even happened.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

There appears to be two Jennifers in this thread who are twins, go to the same optician and the same hairdresser.

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Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

OLDJenniferDONTUSE

Known Participant

Yes. It does appear that way. I didn't realize I had 2 pictures. I feel like I noticed the circle thatholds the picture was blank and so I added a new picture. I'm not sure what happened there.

A

Amebr

Community Expert

I'll see if I can make some time tonight to try to write a little script to make it possible import multiple Word docs at once. Unfortunately Adobe changed the scripting in RH New UI and didn't really document it, so I can't guarantee I'll have success.

A

Amebr

Community Expert

I've done my best with my limited knowledge, but I can't see any way of accessing the import function and passing file paths to the import dialog box.

Do submit a feature request; I'll definitely vote on it.

JenniR_12Author

Inspiring

Hi Amebr. Thank you for trying. You have no idea how much I appreciate your effort. I will submit the feature request today.

Jennifer Rogers

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

I had a late thought that might help in your case. When you have configured the import settings for a document, you can save them. As you have worked on standardising the Word documents, that could be very useful.

________________________________________________________

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

Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

JenniR_12Author

Inspiring

Hi. So, I have been saving my settings on the import. I'm not 100% sure how to use or apply those settngs, for future documents, though, but I know I'm saving them each time I import a document. I figure that is the next thing I have to figure out. I have this file with all my settings and now what do I do with it to make this a little bit faster? Any suggestions you have would be amazing. I'm jumping back and forth on different topics. Right now I'm just looking at publishing to sharepoint online info because somehow I have to make that work. We have a gal that has tried prior to my arrival, and she was having issues. Instead of publishing it kept downloading a random txt file. Do you have any pointers on that piece? I appreciate you taking the time and getting back to me. Thank you. Jen

Jennifer Rogers

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

When you start the import process, the first field let's you choose the document. The next one lets you choose the settings you have previously saved. When you select that, a lot of the settings will get applied rather than you changing them every time.

Sharepoint is a very different question so please start a new thread on that. Otherwise this thread will get messy and it will be difficult for other Sharepoint users to find.

________________________________________________________

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

Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

A

Amebr

Community Expert

I would also recommend putting in a feature request, as importing multiple Word files was possible in Classic, but does not seem to have made it in to New UI.

You can request features and report issues here: https://tracker.adobe.com/

Post the item number in the discussion so people can easily vote if they want the same functionality.

Aside: In Classic I always cleaned up my documents in Word first (with the help of some Word macros, but also some manual tidy-up), then bulk imported them into a temporary "import" project and ran a few RH scripts to do some more tidy-up on Word crud. Finally I imported the cleaned up topics into my proper project. (If it was a brand new project I would skip the temporary "import" project step.)

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

@Jeff_Coatsworth has pointed you to how to import and you must use the Word Document option when you import to convert the document to a topic.

However, you have a bigger problem in that you have hundreds of documents to import. In Word, a style called Normal or say Heading 1 can and probably will be different in each document. That is why you can only import one document at a time so that you can map that document.

If all your documents were perfectly created Word documents after an import you would likely have a good topic with decent code. Now let's get back to the real world. Those documents will have been created by different people and the chances of them being perfect are in line with winning the lottery and being struck by lightning at the same moment. How many time have you applied a colour to a paragraph inline in Word rather than creating a paragraph style. That's just one example of a problem that will cause an issue when importing.

The cleanest way may sound time consuming but it will be better in the long run in terms of getting better code in the topics to ensure they work as they should. Quite simply you select all the text in a Word document and then paste it into a single topic or paste different parts into different topics. Do this a special way. When you paste in, use CTRL SHIFT V. That pastes the text in without any formatting. Then you apply the styles in RoboHelp.

There will be some tidying up of paragraphs but that part might surprise you how well it works. The downside is images and tables. Lists you will format in RoboHelp in the same way as paragraphs.

Images will need to be copy pasted one by one and tables will need to be recreated. Doing a similar exercise from Dreamweaver recently, I found it was obvious which text went into which cell.

What I suggest you do is import a few of the documents, one by one, using the Import Word Document method. If you are lucky and it all works as it should, keep going. I suspect though you will soon find it is down to the quality of the documents and that you will be giving the above a try.

Do let us know how you get on.

________________________________________________________

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

Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

JenniR_12Author

Inspiring

Actually, the first part sevearl months of this project was spent creating our styles and applying them to each Word document so all of the documents are formatted exactly the same so that when we performed our mass dump into Robohelp, it would go smoothly. It never dawned on us that Robohelp didnt' have the capability of doing this. There are only 2 of us working on this project and touching these files, so we are certain that they are formatted properly. From what I'm gathering from your answer, is that there is no way to mport these files into Robohelp other than 1 by 1? That is the fastest suggestion that you have for us? I just want to be clear before I take this news back to my group and let them know this isn't going to work. Thank you in advance and I certainly hope there is a quicker way that hasn't been mentioned to accomplish this task.

Jennifer Rogers

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Just to be clear, this is a user to User forum.

Using Import Word Document (note singular) I couldn't select more than one document at a time. You can try that for yourself.

Before making final decisions, you can try Support but I think they will tell you the same.

See https://helpx.adobe.com/contact/enterprise-support.other.html#robohelp for your Adobe Support options. The email link tcssup@adobe.com is recommended as it reaches a team dedicated to Technical Communication Suite products including RoboHelp.

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

Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

You've had a look at Peter's site? https://www.grainge.org/RoboHelp_Tour/rh2022/authoring/importing_linking.htm

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