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Printed Documentation output, Robohelp 2017, Word 2016 says cannot find Word installed

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
January 17, 2018
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Issue: The Responsive Help > Printed Doc output "cannot find Microsoft Word installed"

Upgraded my Robo projects from Robo 10 (Win 7) to Robo 2017 (Win 10). fyi, I did not have this issue in Robo 10.

Robo 17 is updated/current, 13.0.2.334

Robo 17 is being run on Dell Latitude 7480 on Win 10 (64 bit)

Word 2016 is 32-bit, MSO 16

Robohelp is pointing correctly to Word, i.e. The Robo file association is pointing to the correct winword.exe path/folder/executable. By File Association, I mean the option to associate docx for editing/viewing: the correct path shows - c:\program files (x86)\microsoft office\root\Office16\WINWORD.EXE

I added an association for .doc just in case. Nothing changed.

I tried to generate printed output for my projects and also a sample project - in each case the message about cannot find word installed displayed immediately. Same result when I tried generating an old (ported) printed doc output.

I generate to Responsive (charcoal grey), to my local drive.

Because it is a new machine with a new OS, new Robo version, I'm not sure if there is a setting in a control file or something that is causing confusion for Robohelp.

I've tried "re-registering" Word (not really sure how to tell if it effectively re-registered tho), and tried to ensure I was running Word with elevated privileges (admin).

I am able to import a word file into the project. I can right-click on the word doc in the Robo project and create a pdf for review. It says pdf has been generated (this may be irrelevant if Robo does this opening/pdf'ng internally without actually opening the word engine, just mentioning it).

I might blame a registry entry if this were happening on my old machine, but it's happening on the brand new machine.

I didn't see this R2017/Word 2016 issue raised on the Robo forum (I saw others, such as https://forums.adobe.com/message/9875570#9875570, no help, also https://forums.adobe.com/message/10019504#10019504

This topic has been closed for replies.

jasonc51956842Author

New Participant

Hi, Adobe contacted me; suggested that I run repair on MS Office (Control Panel > MS Office, choose Setup/Change, Repair).

Then reboot, and try to generate Printed doc output from Robo 2017.

I did that, and now I no longer get the 'cannot find Word installed' message! It creates the .doc.

However, it fails to generate the pdf after creating the MS Word doc. The build message says Failed the generate PDF file.

I've asked Adobe if they know of a fix for that (If I go to the SSL folder and right-click on the generated .doc file, I can create the pdf manually, either via Adobe PDF or Power PDF options):

Convert to Adobe PDF

Create PDF from file (this option comes from Nuance Power PDF)

I hope this helps someone else, and thank you!

J

j.bu

New Participant

I just wanted to report that I had the same issue.

Almost the exact same setup: Windows 10 (64 bit), RoboHelp 2017, Word 2016 (32-bit), Word installed before RH, Dell Latitude 7470 (instead of 7480). However, I was trying to run straight-up Printed Documentation (nothing about Responsive Help, which I have never tried using).

The only two things I did were:

1. Update macro settings in Word to "Enable all."

2. Run "Quick Repair" on Microsoft Office from Control Panel, then reboot.

It worked! Thank you Peter and Jason!

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Adding associations in RoboHelp is not a fix for this old problem that seems to have largely gone away. I think there may be one or two threads involving RoboHelp 2015 / 2017 but nothing like the numbers we used to see. Import always worked regardless of whether users could generate printed documentation so there is no link there.

It used to be the case that Word had to be installed and used before RoboHelp but my understanding is that is not a requirement now. However, when this problem occurs, I can't help but think it is worth installing in that order. Maybe that was the case?

Another cause of the problem was when the normal.dot template was installed on a network rather than locally. Check that.

Was RoboHelp installed with admin rights, either yours or the installer? If not, that could well be the cause.

The error message is wrong for issues with your Word security level but it is still worth checking those. They must be set to Enable All.

In Word, go to File > Options > Trust Centre > Trust Centre Settings > Macro Settings.

If any of those things help, then please post back to say what the issue was. As you have found with the other posts, it's annoying when people don't as it doesn't help the next person along.

If they don't, then contact Adobe Support and they should be able to fix the required registry setting. Again, if that is the solution let us know. If not, still let us know.

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

@petergrainge

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jasonc51956842Author

New Participant

Thank you, Peter! I will try your suggestions, for which I am very grateful (btw, yes, MS Word was installed first) - and I will post the results here. Due to meetings and days off I may not get to it until next week. Thanks so much for the suggestions!

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

I wanted to post this update of my findings after looking into Peter's suggestions, and a couple of things I did after that. I have emailed adobe with the complete description in case they have an idea:

The macro setting was the one thing I was sure needed to be changed to conform to Peter's suggestion – I set it to Enable All Macros, reopened the Robo project and tried to generate the Printed Documentation (I clicked “Properties” for the Printed Documentation) and got the same message about Cannot Find Word Installed.

Below are the other things I checked per Peter, that appear to be ok as-is:

“Word had to be installed and used before RoboHelp but my understanding is that is not a requirement now.” - Word was installed locally on the laptop before I installed Robo 2017 – I’m assuming I loaded a Word document in Word before installing Robo but I’m not certain.

“Another cause of the problem was when the normal.dot template was installed on a network rather than locally.” – It looks like Word finds the templates locally: This PC > Documents> Custom Office Templates” etc.

“ Was RoboHelp installed with admin rights, either yours or the installer? ” Both the full install and the 13.0.2 update patch files say I have “Full Control”, i.e. the same as Admininstrator.

Additional things I did: I uninstalled LibreOffice entirely, just in case. Restarted.

I uninstalled Robohelp 2017, Restarted and reinstalled, running both the install and update 2 exe's as Administrator (right-click on exe, Run as Administrator).

I still get the same result. I did the uninstall/reinstalls in hopes of cleaning out/re-writing a potentially problematic registry entry, as well as to ensure I had installed as Admin.
As state above, I've emailed all this info to Adobe (tcssup) excepting the last step, the uninstall/reinstall.
Thank you again for your help.

Way back there was an issue when Open Office (forerunner of Libre Office)

was installed. I'll try to locate it in an earlier version of my site.

I did say the message was wrong for the macro setting so I didn't expect

that to fix things but it had to be tried. Also it would prevent generation

when the problem is fixed.

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