Find and Replace Edits Only in Notepad

[W_James]

I recently upgraded from RoboHelp 6 to RoboHelp 8. In version 6, RoboHelp was configured to open HTML files from Multi-file Find and Replace in RoboHelp itself rather than any other HTML editor. Now that I have upgraded, when I perform a search using Find and Replace in Files, select a file from the results, and then click the Edit button, the file opens in Notepad. The same occurs with a colleague's computer, who also recently upgraded.

This occurs no matter how I have configured RoboHelp and my operating system. So for example, it does not seem to matter whether any of the following options are selected:
* Under Tools | Options, on the Associations tab, Auto-select Editor can be selected, or Use Default Editor can be selected. This doesn't change the behavior.
* Under Tools | Options, on the Associations tab, Design View <Internal> can be set as the default. Again, no effect.
* Under Tools | Options, on the Associations tab, File Associations can have .HTM being edited with RoboHTML.exe. No help there.
* Under Tools | Options, on the General tab, Check for system HTML editor can be selected or not. No luck. Dispair is starting to sink in...

I'm not sure whether the OS settings make a difference, but it is configured to open .htm and .html files in Internet Explorer. You would think this would not make a difference, however, because clicking Edit in RoboHelp Find and Replace in Files does not open the files in IE. When you click View, it opens the files in IE.

Thanks in advance for your help!

James Gage, CSC
U.S. Dept. of State

[W_James]

I meant "despair." anyway, you get the idea.

[Peter Grainge · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the forum.

I no longer have access to RH8 but here's what I believe is going on.

RH7 introduced the Multiple Document Interface and removed the ability to edit single topics. Multi File Find and Replace opens a topic in whatever tool has been selected in IE to edit HTML files.

As RH cannot open a single file, if you do set IE to use RH, you are wasting your time as it cannot do that. It has to open a project and from IE, it cannot do that.

[W_James]

Wow! Thank you. That is exactly the problem. I never would have connected the HTML editor with the IE configuration. I checked IE (I use IE 7) and discovered that an HTML editor was not selected for it for some reason. Notepad must be the default when none is selected. I then selected Microsoft Word as a test, because the list of editors is hard-coded and you can't specify a third-party editor like RoboHelp. (You can select Excel if you want! Yippee!) Sure enough, when I edited the file from the find function in RoboHelp, the file opened in Word. This is an unfortunate loss of functionality in RoboHelp 8 that I hope is resurrected in an update to the software. Thanks again for your help!

[Peter Grainge]

You can add editors to that list. How is covered in Snippets on my site.

[W_James]

Got it! Thanks again.