Imported Word Heading 4 Text Incorrectly Tagged with Color Style White

[ColdForest]

In the Word document below I have the Heading 4 text of "Double Range" and "Comparison". The former is correctly styled during conversion but the latter is somehow styled with color "white", making it hidden (against white background) in the resulting output.

Here's what the rendered HTML looks like in the RH2019 Classic topic pane:

Here's what the HTML source looks like in the RH2019 Classic topic pane (first the former heading and then the latter):

<h4 style="margin-left: 0cm; text-indent: 14.45pt;"><a name="b_Double_Range" 
														 id="b_Double_Range"><span 
	 style="color: #000000; font-weight: normal;">b)<span style="font: 7.0pt 'Times New Roman';">&#160;&#160;</span></span>&#160;<span 
	 style="color: #000000;">Double-Range</span></a></h4>

<h4 style="margin-left: 0cm;"><a name="c_Comparison" id="c_Comparison"><span 
	 style="color: #000000; font-weight: normal;">c)<span style="font: 7.0pt 'Times New Roman';">&#160;&#160;</span></span>&#160;<span 
	 style="color: #ffffff;">Comparison</span></a></h4>

And the final Response HTML 5 output:

I've looked closely at the original Word document Heading styles and text and haven't been able to decipher where the colour white is coming from. Anyone have any ideas on how to dissect the conversion more closely?

[Incidentally, a pandoc conversion to markdown for the original source Word document does not result in any differentiation in styling between these two headings...]

[Peter Grainge]

Open the document in Word and Save As > Web Page Filtered. Open the file created in a text editor and compare the two headings there. Maybe that will tell you something.

[ColdForest · Accepted solution]

Ya, weird, the resulting HTML page now has the 2nd h4 element with 'white' text color as well. Both 'b' and 'c' h4 elements are marked up as follows:

<h4 style='margin-left:0cm;text-indent:14.45pt'><a name="_Toc38981596"><span
style='color:black;font-weight:normal'>b)<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span><span style='color:white'>Double-Range</span></a></h4>

Here's the page in a browser:

So this isn't a RH issue (thx for helping to confirm that), but some weird artifact in the original Word file. No longer the domain of Adobe/RH but does anyone have any insight into this odd Word behaviour? I've look closely at the style and character charateristics of the heading text and nothing's surfaced...

[Peter Grainge]

Wild guess but change the file while it is in Web Page Filtered format, then save it as DOCX and import it again. Make sure you have plenty of backups arounds. 🙂

[ColdForest]

😉 Yes, this would work but it isn't a long term nor an efficient solution. I need to ensure the dozens of manuals that get processed by RH don't result in these kinds of hidden artifacts that end up resulting in presentation divergence between formats. I've never seen this before so I'll just keep poking around to see if I can find an underlying root cause...

[Peter Grainge]

RoboHelp is only processing what you give it and you confirmed that the problem is the source document.