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A
Anonymous
February 8, 2013
Question

Generating WebHelp/HTML After Upgrading from RoboHelp for Word X3

  • February 8, 2013
  • 2 replies
  • 8245 views

My client is looking to change the way they generate help for an internal application. Until now, they've been using RoboHelp for Word X3.  I was able to import the existing project into RoboHelp 10 and generate "Primary Layout (WebHelp)."  I opened the generated help in IE and FireFox and found the Table of Contents, which generated well.

Most but not all of the individual help pages will not open, however. Those that will not open are in CHM format. FireFox is reporting errors like "Firefox doesn't know how to open this address, because the protocol (rmation.chm) isn't associated with any program."  Can anyone advise me on how to proceed?

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2 replies

A
Anonymous
February 13, 2013

New information. I found that if I change some of the "upgrade options," I get much better results. Specifically, when I first open the old .hpj file, I selected the following options:

  • In "Import WinHelp Project: Folders": select "Do not create subfolder" under "Folder for HTML Files"
  • In "Import WinHelp Project: Features": select "Retain" under "External Topics"

All the links come into the upgraded project correctly.  I'm wondering how I might have known about these option settings at the beginning of this effort.

I appear now to have a functionally-equivalent web-based help system.  It would have been nice if the glossary in the old system were imported into RH10 as a collection of glossary items but I'm not sure how the links to those items that are currently in the help topics ought to have been handled in that situation.

G
georgedemo
Participant
June 10, 2014

I had the same problem importing an RH for Word project into RH11.

Almost every link in the project was corrupted - both links in TOC and within topics. The TOC links were all showing as external links, not regular page links.

The corrupted links all started with a couple of garbage characters, then "n.chm::" followed by the actual link text.

By trial and error, I found that the same options Steven used worked for my project. That is:

  • In "Import WinHelp Project: Folders": select "Do not create subfolder" under "Folder for HTML Files"
  • In "Import WinHelp Project: Features": select "Retain" under "External Topics"

Once I set those options, all the links were fine.

RoboColum_n_
RoboColum_n_
Legend
February 8, 2013

Can we clarify a few things first.

It sounds like you have migrated the RHX3 output into the RoboHelp HTML application and are not using the old RoboHelp for Word application at all. Is that correct?

Second you start talking about WebHelp generating OK and then say the problem is with a CHM. Do you mean that you are creating both WebHelp and CHMs and that the generated WebHelp is all displaying OK?

Next I am confused what Firefox has to do with CHM files. Do you get this error message when you double click on the CHM file to open it?

A
Anonymous
February 8, 2013

My apologies for being such a noob with Robohelp:

  • I imported the existing RoboHelp project by opening the .hpj file in the project. There's also a .HLP in the directory; however, when I try to open that file, I'm consistently getting "The specified file could not be opened.  Ensure that the help file is not running and try again." It's not running.
  • I'm not using the old RoboHelp for Word application at all.
  • Once I opened the old project, I immediately generated web help using the File/Generate/Primary Layout(WebHelp) menu option. I'm not intentionally doing anything to generate CHMs.
  • If I open the top-level generated .htm file in Firefox, I see a left-side navigation bar with the table of contents.  The index is fully populated; however, clicking on many of the TOC entries leads to the error I posted above.
  • There are no .CHM files in the generated WebHelp content (which is what I expected and hoped for)
  • I found a bunch of references in the generated HTML that look like this:
      <nobr><a href="../n.chm::/V_I_P_Definition.htm"><b>V.I.P. - Definition</b></a></nobr><br>
    I have no idea where "n.chm::" came from.  It's not in the generated folder structure.
  • The TOC entries have similar incorrect links with portions of .chm filenames and double-colons.
Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 12, 2013

Somewhere along the line someone has created those links that now need to point the correct topic in the webhelp. I am assuming the topic is part of this webhelp.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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