RH 2019 - How do you get links to work in PDF output?

[DawnH_CMT]

Hello! I am a longtime user of RoboHelp (since 2000) and am embarrassed to admit that I am really struggling with the new RH 2019 redesign in a number of areas.

Today, I wanted to output to Word (which I knew was removed as an output), so I decided to try to output to PDF and then convert it to Word.

When I generate PDF as an output, I did not see any setting about maintaining links. My generated PDF shows the links embedded in my topics (they are blue and underlined in the PDF), but they do not work. Am I missing a setting somewhere?

Also, I thought I saw in one of the RoboHelp Reimagined videos that RH 2019 could output to ODF,  but I cannot find that in the software (and can't find the darn video again!). That may be a better way for me to get to Word.

If you are wondering why I want a Word output, it is because in addition to generating multiple HTML5 outputs using conditional build tags/build expressions for many audiences, I also output a Word document for each audience/product that gets fine tuned (special cover pages, styles, etc) and released as PDFs (in addition to the online help).

I am running RH 2019 Version 14.0.7, so I am up to date with the latest fixes.

I am hoping I am just missing some setting and all will be well!

Many thanks to this fantastic community.

[Amebr]

I don't currently have update 7 (long story) but I can't find a "word" output in Update 5, and it's not mentioned as a new feature in the release notes for update 6 or 7. I assume adding that output is still on the roadmap; it's mentioned on Peter's website:

RoboHelp Tour

I highly recommend this tour as it details a lot of the differences between the old RH and the new RH.

If you need Word output, you would need to be using Robohelp 2019 Classic (not the new interface) at this stage. You could log a feature request here, which might help bump the priority.

Tracker

I'm not sure what you mean by 'maintaining links'? I generated the sample project "Robohelp Reimagined" to PDF and checked a couple of links to topics, which jumped to the linked location. The only thing I can think is that the topic is not in the table of contents however I can't test this theory at the moment, as my copy is behaving really strangely.

And no need to apologise about finding the new interface difficult. For old hands it's going to take some time to adjust (I'm still not used to Microsoft's ribbon from 2007 :S )

[DawnH_CMT]

Hi Amebr,

Thanks for your reply.

I have gone through all of Peter G's materials and lots and lots of the Adobe videos on the new release in an effort to get familiar with all the changes as I evaluate it for implementation at my company. I know there is no longer an output to Word, which is fine. (I was just trying to be creative to meet my needs.)

My issue is that when I generate the PDF output from RH 2019, the links in the PDF are dead.  That is what I meant by "maintaining" the links. These are links that work in topics when I generate WebHelp or HTML5. However, they appear blue and underlined in the PDF, but are dead ends. I am hoping there is some setting that I missed that will enable them for the PDF.

Any ideas on what I am doing wrong?

Thanks!

[Peter Grainge]

I have just check a cross topic link and got the same result as Amber, it works fine.

I suggest you create a simple two topic project and test in that. Then post back.

---

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

@petergrainge

[DawnH_CMT]

Hi Peter,

A test project works fine! I created two topics that linked back and forth and it was fine in the PDF.

However, it seems that I got caught by the feature where a topic that is NOT in the TOC and is NOT referenced by a topic in the TOC gets excluded form the PDF (and thus links to these topics in the PDF are dead because the they weren't in the document -- which I did not notice since there are a lot of topics and I assumed they were all there.).

I had not built a TOC since I was testing/evaluating  RH 2019 and not really authoring, which I guess explains why my links were dead.

I will keep playing and see if anything new comes ups relative to this, I'll post back.

Thanks for your help.

Dawn

[Peter Grainge]

That's the way all outputs work in 2019.

Peter Grainge

www.grainge.org

@petergrainge