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pault4511844
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May 17, 2018
Question

Pasting From Word into RoboHelp - Bad Formatting

  • May 17, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 2064 views

Hi,

Currently have a process whereby our webhelp authors create content in MS Word 2016. This is then pasted into RoboHelp 2017. This results in formatting problems within RoboHelp which take a lot of time to fix. Is there a simple way to fix this by applying styles from our style sheet including existing 'table styles'.

There is a post on Peter Grainge's website in the area of 'Content Creation' which highlights this challenge (HERE). I'd like to understand more on how this can be achieved. Has anyone met similar challenges or aware of a historical post on this?

Thanks. 

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    1 reply

    Peter Grainge
    Community Expert
    Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 17, 2018

    The link you have posted is to the RoboHelp for Word section. That was a separate program that used Word as the editor. It was discontinued several versions of RoboHelp back.

    You can either paste into RoboHelp or import the documents. The latter is described on my site. See Importing and Linking Word Documents

    If you want to paste in, the quickest way to clean the code is select all (CTRL A) in Design View and then click the Clear Formatting icon.

    You will then need to work through the text to apply the styles from your CSS.

    See www.grainge.org for free RoboHelp and Authoring information.

    @petergrainge

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    pault4511844Author
    Participant
    May 23, 2018

    Thanks Peter,

    This is where the problem & the inefficiencies lie.

    In my view MS Word is not a suitable for this process due to the formatting rework required 'post' import/paste but currently it seems to be the only option available to me outside of purchasing robohelp licenses for my 100+ authors. This is not an economically viable option & also would not be a desirable process solution for other specific reasons.

    I would be surprised if this was not a common problem out there. My EMEA colleagues actually had to move off RoboHelp to get around this. Rightly or wrongly, it factored in their strategic decision.

    Peter Grainge
    Community Expert
    Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 21, 2018

    We also run into similar formatting issues importing content from Word from our SMEs, and we end up with tons of "mso" prefix style attributes in the HTML. We're in the habit now of not importing doc files but we instead just re-type or copy and paste what they give us directly into RH and manually remove formatting. We're usually modifying what they give us anyway for simplicity and consistency with our internal style guide etc.

    That said, I'm curious if Peter's approach works for you, to have them author inside a template created from RH styles that you can then import directly back into the project without style loss.

    I never knew RH had that Clear Formatting option. Thanks for that. I just tested it and it works well for most things. However, at least one thing I ran into that it doesn't seem to handle is it doesn't remove the style structure from div tags. For example, I ended up with this in the HTML after using Clear Formatting. I'd expect it to just leave me with a flat set of div tags without any style attributes:

    But still, a handy tool.


    If you want a seriously serious tool for cleaning up PowerGrep is excellent, particularly used with Regular Expressions. It's a real learning curve but can do in seconds what would take hours or days to do manually. Be aware though, it can wreck a project beyond repair even quicker. When using PowerGrep, always back up before you start. I do mean ALWAYS.

    You could write an expression that will find any tag with mso in it that will strip both the start and end tag but leave the content. Don't ask me to write it, I just know it can be done.

    If you regularly have large amounts of content that need this sort of clean up, it could be worth getting a regex consultant in.

    See www.grainge.org for free RoboHelp and Authoring information.

    @petergrainge

    Use the menu (bottom right) to mark the Best Answer or Highlight particularly useful replies. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here.
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