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Imported Word Document Not Resulting in any Pagination/Topics

Contributor ,
Dec 08, 2016 Dec 08, 2016

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I have a simple test project that I'm creating with an imported Word document (also a simple document - 40 odd pages). I've done this in order to try to troubleshoot why the import isn't correctly creating new topics based on my "Heading 2" pagination setting.

I've come to this (I'm new to RoboHelp) after my first importation attempt created only a single new (top-level) topic. In this case the entire content of the the document was put inside this top-level topic. I finally read enough to find out how RH does pagination/new topic creation on import and so I went ahead and set this in the import Conversion Settings dialog:

RHHeading2Pagination.png

However, after running the import again (in a brand new project) I see that there is still only a single resulting topic. TOC, index, etc are all created correctly, but not the topic pagination aspect. Generating the Responsive HTML5 output confirms this since search only ever returns a single result (since everything is contained within a single topic).

What am I doing wrong??

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LEGEND ,
Dec 08, 2016 Dec 08, 2016

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Hi there

You may not be doing anything wrong. Often we encounter Word documents where the Word user has no clue whatsoever of how to properly apply styling such as Heading levels. Have you opened the document and ensured that each place where you would hope to see a new topic created that it is formatted as a Heading Two in Word before you import?

Cheers... Rick

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Contributor ,
Dec 09, 2016 Dec 09, 2016

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Hi Rick,

Ah, yes , the document has the expected styles (indeed these styles only show up in the conversion settings based on the detected styles in the source document). I also see these styles in the single resulting topic when perusing the HTML. So there must be something else in play here - ideas? Maybe there's some other setting in my import settings that confuse these pagination requests?

Thx, -David

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Contributor ,
Dec 09, 2016 Dec 09, 2016

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When I started down this road of working with Word & RoboHelp, I studied Peter Grainge's page - Importing Using RoboHelp 9, 10 and 11  - about Word & RoboHelp. The information on that page & the sample project were helpful to me and once I got the styles mapped, it's cake by the ocean. Hope that song doesn't get stuck in your head, but it just finished on my playlist...

Paul Hanson

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Contributor ,
Dec 09, 2016 Dec 09, 2016

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Thx Paul, that's a good reference.

However, nothing in this reference helped me identify the true culprit. I ended up using trial and error wrt the other import settings I mentioned above. This turned out to be directly related to the "Convert Word list to" conversion setting. When I don't check this option the topics are created (more or less) correctly based on my Heading 2/3 pagination settings. However, if I select this and set it to "Multilevel List" I see no pagination (and everything is imported/converted to a single, top-level topic). If I select this and set it to "HTML List" I see some pagination, but not what I expect (only the Heading 2 pagination setting is used but not the Heading 3 pagination setting).

What's going on here? It would appear that these "list" settings are somehow interfering with pagination - perhaps setting these are in conflict with any other pagination settings and don't make sense when style-based pagination is in effect?

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LEGEND ,
Dec 09, 2016 Dec 09, 2016

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Hmmm, I'm wondering about something. When we think about Word, we need to answer a question. Do we IMPORT, and after the import, forget that the document was ever in Word?

Or, do we want an ongoing relationship with Word?

Where you define the settings will depend on whether you are linking or importing. And the settings look the same for both.

If importing, you click the Edit button during the import process. But if linking, you open Project settings and configure the Word import there.

Are we certain we are in the correct location?

Cheers... Rick

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Contributor ,
Dec 09, 2016 Dec 09, 2016

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Hi Rick,

I'm *importing* and making these settings changes as part of this sequence. Other than that I'm not really clear on what you're getting at wrt linking vs. importing (I understand the settings that are used in each of these situations are derived from different locations, but I'm not clear on whether you're suggesting one sequence is preferred over the other and/or is unique wrt the effect of the pagination/list.setting).

Incidentally, in my case, the source Word document is the "master" document for the resulting HTML help text. Essentially, the Word document is a soft-copy "manual" and this document source is used to seed the resulting HTML help text after each new release of the document. The resulting HTML help text is solely made up of this source documentation. Further, I'm noticing that the conversion process is still not very accurate (there are a litany of imperfections: index entries are missed/incorrect, some pagination is incorrect, etc.). So there is definitely going to be some post-processing needed to fix up the less than perfect import results.

My statements above are what I envision for this RH project. As I mentioned I'm new to RH so I haven't yet vetted this sequence in any real way.

Thx, -David

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Contributor ,
Dec 09, 2016 Dec 09, 2016

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If the Word document is retaining the same name from version to version, I don't know if I would import it into RoboHelp. Instead, I would probably link to the Word document instead. From what you describe, the Word document is updated and then the Help Text is generated from it, right? If you are linking to it, when you add content to the document, RoboHelp will automatically see that there was a change and then by "updating" RoboHelp, your changes are automatically incorporated.

Do you have character as well as paragraph styles defined in the template associated to your Word doc?

Paul Hanson

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Contributor ,
Dec 09, 2016 Dec 09, 2016

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It's a little more subtle than that - for example, the document *title* changes after every release (i.e., the filename includes the version of the manual - e.g., "Product Manual 1_0_0.docx", "Product Manual 2_0_0.docx"). What I was hoping to do after (during?) the original project setup was to rename the results (post-import) so they don't include any reference to the specific filename of the Word document being imported (i.e., make these name references version independent). Linking didn't seem to be appropriate for a workflow like this; moreover, a good amount of fixup is needed post-import (as alluded to in my previous post) so I figured I'd just manually re-import the latest document each time a new version was released.

Does this make sense?

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Contributor ,
Dec 09, 2016 Dec 09, 2016

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I know you say that the file name changes, but I am going to still suggest keeping the Word doc the same and putting the version on the title page of the document instead. Perhaps if you need to archive "version 1" that could be done by making a copy of it and renaming the copy with the version in the file name. Obviously, you have to do what is best for your situation, but I would venture a guess that eventually the issues you are facing will iron themselves out.

As for the multi-level causing an issue, I don't really know how helpful I can be without looking at the Word doc itself. I can only speculate that there is "something" in the template that makes the heading associate itself with a multi-level list, but without looking at the style definitions, I am only guessing. My email address is in my Adobe ID profile if you want to email the Word doc to me - I'm willing to take a look.

Thanks,

Paul

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Contributor ,
Dec 09, 2016 Dec 09, 2016

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Thx Paul.

I take your point regarding the linking aspect, I'll ponder this a bit more.

I'll also look at putting together an example document that illustrates the multi-level item.

I was able to work through the detailed pagination item I was seeing. But here's a lingering one I'm unsure about. This one relates to the generated index. The index looks fine in RH, but the generated HTML's index is missing items. Here's a snip of the RH index alongside the web view of the index:

RHIndexProblem.png

Weird...

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Contributor ,
Dec 20, 2016 Dec 20, 2016

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...in case anyone was curious about this: this discrepancy relates to the fact that the top-level index item (for index items with sub-entries) did not have its own, explicit entry in the source Word document. These index entries show up as cross-references in RH. This is a current limitation in RH; all top-level Word index entries must be explicitly defined when they otherwise also have sub-entries.

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LEGEND ,
Dec 09, 2016 Dec 09, 2016

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My concern had to do with the possibility that you had perhaps found the option in Project Settings and were going there, then simply importing and expecting things to happen. In further thought of this, I'm realizing that's really not possible. But when you are chasing gremlins, all possibilities exist and are worthy of consideration.

I might suggest what Paul said. Try renaming the document and import again and see if things change.

Cheers... Rick

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Contributor ,
Dec 09, 2016 Dec 09, 2016

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Captiv8r wrote:

I might suggest what Paul said. Try renaming the document and import again and see if things change.

I'm wondering if you're seeing all of my previous posts on this thread? I've isolated the problematic setting wrt pagination being ignored.

Did you see that thread entry? Seems like some of my responses are being moderated and some aren't and if others don't see these "in moderation" entries the flow of this thread will seem pretty disjoint. Not sure why some entries are being moderated and not others...

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Participant ,
Jan 10, 2017 Jan 10, 2017

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Hello,
Please make sure that the Word TOC is reflecting the structure you need, and then after importing, check the TOC in RH.

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Contributor ,
Jan 10, 2017 Jan 10, 2017

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EmanAssem wrote:

Hello,
Please make sure that the Word TOC is reflecting the structure you need, and then after importing, check the TOC in RH.

What are you refering to here? As mentioned earlier in the thread (i.e., "...I was able to work through the detailed pagination item I was seeing...") the pagination issue has been worked around (and an outstanding support issue created with RH support - regarding pagination and "Convert work list to" settings).

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Community Expert ,
Jan 12, 2017 Jan 12, 2017

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Are you willing to privately share the source document with me? See the Contact page on my site and send the document as instructed there. Do make sure you include a link to this thread and please do not email the document direct.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

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New Here ,
Feb 27, 2017 Feb 27, 2017

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I'm having the same problem, and I have the most ridiculous workaround.  Convert it to PDF, and then import the PDF. I know. Ridiculous. I'm embarrassed for you, Adobe. 

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Community Expert ,
Feb 28, 2017 Feb 28, 2017

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You need to be aware that whilst some Adobe staff post to these forums, it is not fully supported so any comments for them need to be sent via Customer Support or some other official channel.

Whenever I have seen anyone get frustrated by pagination, there has always been a simple solution related to either their document or their settings. However, I have only been following these forums for about twenty years.

One of the most common is where people create a style and call it Heading X. The style must be a Word heading, not a paragraph style labelled as a heading.

Same offer to you. See the Contact page on my site and send me a document that you cannot get to paginate. There may be a more complex reason but I can only help by working with the document. The content can be shortened and changed to garbage if needs be but don't change the styles. If you do edit the content before sending it, do import into a blank project to confirm it still exhibits the problem.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

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New Here ,
Feb 28, 2017 Feb 28, 2017

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In the real world, we inherit documents from SMEs and clients.  If you understood your customer’s needs and you had any empathy for real-world situations, you would not “blame” the user.

In addition, I figured it was the document, so just to test the situation, I created a new document (standard Word template) and applied standard Word styles. See the image below:

Test.PNG

The problem “persisted,” so, yeah. It’s not my problem. It’s Robohelps.

I’m still embarrassed for you, and you should be doubly embarrassed for trying to blame the user.

Best,

[details removed by ussnorway]

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Community Expert ,
Feb 28, 2017 Feb 28, 2017

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Sorry Yvonne, little unclear as to exactly what problem you are experiencing - the OP had a couple of issues that got figured out.

PS - you do know don't you, that you're talking to other RH users on these forums, right? If you need to kvetch about something to Adobe, you need to contact Adobe Support or use the bugbase tracker to get on their official radar.

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Community Expert ,
Feb 28, 2017 Feb 28, 2017

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Wow! I wasn't blaming the user in the way that you have taken it. I was simply saying that experience has shown that often it is something the user has done. That is not to say they have done anything that most users of Word would perceive as wrong and in Word alone it is something that would work apparently OK. It is simply that RoboHelp has to take the document in whatever way Word has first converted it to HTML and many forums will tell you the HTML Word creates is not squeaky clean.

Yes I know you are likely to inherit documents from a multitude of Word users and they will have varying levels of skill with Word. Some will be very good and some will do whatever they can that makes it look right, even though technically it is not the correct way to do something in Word.

If the document you have created is giving you the same problem, it does seem more likely it is something in the RoboHelp settings.

So no, I don't feel embarrassed because the most likely cause was what I suggested. With that ruled out, we can look at other things. I also don't feel embarrassed because like everyone here, I am not an Adobe employee, I am an author like you trying to help others and I made an offer to look at things for you in my own time.

So instead of being so intent of having a pop at people, why not try to let me help. Send me your document and the project you tried to import it into. I assume it was a new project.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

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New Here ,
Feb 28, 2017 Feb 28, 2017

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I provided a workaround, you provided an excuse, but if you feel the need to have the last word, knock yourself out.

Best,

Yvonne Wade Sanchez

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Contributor ,
Feb 28, 2017 Feb 28, 2017

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https://forums.adobe.com/people/Yvonne+Sanchez  wrote

I provided a workaround, you provided an excuse, but if you feel the need to have the last word, knock yourself out.

This is very unfair. As the original author of this post I found fellow forum users to be very helpful and generous in there offers to help hunt down root causes for these types of problems. In the end, I was able to isolate most of these on my own, but the help I got definitely gave me the sense that there was a *community* of users collaborating to assist each other.

Up to now I've uncovered several problems related to importing of Word documents into RH. These were solved/worked around by: 1) figuring things out on my own with help from this forum, 2) working with Adobe support directly (for further workarounds), and 3) the creation of various reports with Adobe to identify/register limitations in the import process (some of these I believe will be fixed in the next release of RH).

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Community Expert ,
Feb 28, 2017 Feb 28, 2017

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I am more than happy to be proved wrong. Are you? All you have to do is

send that project and document.

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

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