Mapping to Custom Word Doc Has Mixed Results

[tasha112760]

I diligently created a Word template with the exact same styles as my RoboHelp project. I then created a Printed Documentation single-source configuration to map the styles one-to-one from RoboHelp to Word. Some of the styles worked fine, that is, they mapped exactly to the Word styles and everything looked fine. But there were three problems:

1) In some cases, the Word styles in the template did not display in the dropdown list of all styles for mapping to the RoboHelp styles. The styles I need show up in some of the dropdown lists but not the one I needed. And what's even more strange, the styles are named exactly the same thing, so why didn't it map the styles automatically as it seems to have done for all the other styles?

2) Some of the styles mapped to Normal, even though they are specifically mapped to a named style in the Word template.

3) Some of the styles mapped to the matching style in Word, however, the style also had inline formatting of Line spacing: at least 13.5, which meants the paragraph doesn't look right in Word when it is converted.

Has anyone experienced these problems? Are there solutions? Does anyone know how to apply the default template styles to the text in a document to eliminate the inline formatting?

I had thought that mapping RoboHelp styles one-to-one to Word styles would give me the most control over the output in Word, but that does not seem to be the case. Sigh.

[Peter Grainge]

See the topic on my site about Printed Documentation.

[tasha112760]

Thank you so much! Indeed, these are all things that are "known issues" and I will revise my strategy thanks to your suggestions. I particluarly liked these points, all quoted on your website:

- So why not create indented styles in RH and map to similar styles in Word? Well look at it this way, why not bang your head against a brick wall? Both can be done and both are painful. (YUP)

- One caution about using your own template. Many problems seen on the RoboHelp forums are fixed by changing to the supplied Style Mapping template. There is nothing apparently wrong with the templates that were used but for some reason they will not play nicely with RoboHelp. (YUP)

- One thing to note is that when you click the dropdown on the right, it will not show all the styles in the Word template that you are using, RH will only display those that it regards as being appropriate to the style to which you are mapping. If the RH styles include bullets or numbering, then only the bulleted and numbered styles in Word are listed. Note however that elsewhere I caution against using numbered styles in RH. (YUP)

- One way to create the Word document template is to generate a printed document from your project using the "Use the Project's CSS Styles" option. The resulting document will contain a set of named styles matching the styles used in your RoboHelp project. You can then reformat each of the styles as you want them to be in your printed document output, delete the content of the document, and save it as a document template.

- Mapping styles with indents does not work in the Word document when it is created. (YUP)

- Set up all your numbering using an appropriate style and use the numbering icon and the indent icon to get the desired result. By "appropriate style", I mean one that does not have built in numbering or indents as they will not play nicely with Word.

Thanks again!
PS I'm using RoboHelp 7