Is there a way to link directly to the Glossary from text?

[LisaFinn]

In my WebHelp project I want to put a link to the Glossary from within the text; for example, "For definitions of these terms, see the Glossary."  Is there a way to do that?

[RoboColum_n_]

Yes there is although it doesn't work exactly in the way you require. Once you have the glossary defined, run the Glossary Hotspot wizard. It creates expanding text hotspots where it finds words / phrases in a topic that match a glossary definition. You can access this by right clicking in a glossary and selecting Glossary Hotspot Wizard.

My advice would be to make a copy of your project before doing anything. Once you have run the wizard adding the hotspots, it can be difficult to remove them.

[LisaFinn]

Thanks, but what I'm looking for is a way to link to the Glossary tab itself from within the text. I don't want to have to list each term in the Glossary and link from it: I want to make a link to the Glossary tab from the word "Glossary". Do you know of a way to do that?

[Peter Grainge]

I don't think that can be done but I'm not understanding why you want to link to the tab and make the user find the term in the glossary. What Colum has suggested means that if a term in a topic is in the glossary, the user will be able to see the definition without having to leave the topic.

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@petergrainge

[RoboColum_n_]

The only way you could do what you require is NOT to use the Glossary functionality at all. Instead create topics with bookmarks for the definitions. Then you could link to them.

[PDF Boy]

If there is a glossary in the help why can't the users simply click the Glossary button to access it? Why add the text 'Glossary' in topics at all?.

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

Hopefully my friends Colum and Peter will pardon my intrusion here.

Sounds like you may be misunderstanding the way they are suggesting you work. With the Glossary Hotspot Wizard, the words that are in the glossary become hotspots. At that point, you could simply disable the Glossary tab feature and still have a glossary, because when a word that is in the glossary is viewed on the screen, it becomes a clickable link. When the user clicks it, an expanding hotspot reveals the definition for that word.

Working this way ensures there is never an issue with a term "not being in the glossary", as ONLY the terms in the glossary list are linked. Working the other way by clicking the Glossary tab and searching sometimes leaves the user unsatisfied, as they may be looking for a term but it was never defined.

Cheers... Rick

[LisaFinn]

Thank you to everyone who responded. I do understand what responders are trying to say, but in this one case I would like to refer users generally to the Glossary without taking the space to list each term separately. You  make a good point though, Rick, about the danger of clicking the Glossary tab and not finding the term there.

[Peter Grainge]

Why would you have to list each term? The idea is the wizard finds the glossary terms that are used in each topic and converts those to expanding text. The topic would thus be no different in space terms unless the user clicks the highlighted term to read its definition.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Captiv8r]

I was wondering the same thing.

[LisaFinn]

Because the terms do not appear on the page at all. My application page has a variety of options the user can select. I don't list all those options in the help, so the Glossary would not pick them up. I just wanted to tell users that if they didn't know what one of the terms on the screen meant, they could go to the Glossary for a definition.