RH2020 - scripts for importing or converting documents for import

[Tejas Dandekar]

We have a scenario in one of the product where their legacy documentation is hundreds of documents 900+ I would say. These are documents ranging from 10 to 50 pages - assorted.

The customer is asking if they want to move all of these documents into RH source for single sourcing is it possible?

More than single sourcing the challenge is importing 900+ documents individually in RH. Any script based solution here?

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Possibly, depends on what format the legacy docs are in.

[Tejas Dandekar]

So all the legacy documentation is in MS Word and doesn't have a common template or style applied. Multiple folks may have worked on it. You can say it is a document dump or repository of Word documents that they are looking at a possibility to import in RH. Any scripts or pointers would help them decide if RH is the right tool/solution or if they need something else.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

I don't think "tooling" is the issue here - you're going to have the same issues moving content into any tool from a mess like that. What are they hoping to accomplish/do with the content once it's in another tool? That's the more important question.

[Peter Grainge]

Sorry but no script based solution. If you save the settings and select that WSF file next time you import, it will apply the same settings but the mapping might need tweaking for different topics.

I would expect the task to very time consuming unless you are very lucky with all the documents being simple.

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My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[Peter Grainge]

So they have created a mess and want an automated clean up. I wish you luck. Probably a lot easier if they do some initial clean up in Word.

What other tool do you have in mind? I looked at a competitor solution for someone else with a similar problem. They agreed that overall RoboHelp had advantages. The main one being that RoboHelp does not touch your main CSS file, any new styles go into a unique CSS so that you have the options I set out in RH2020 Importing/Linking Word/Fm Docs (grainge.org). The other product adds them to your main CSS. Imagine what that looks like after adding 900 documents.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[Amebr]

RH2020 scripting is based on javascript (node.js, electron, etc) so if you have a developer you could probably get a script to import word documents in bulk. You can find the RH specific scripting notes in the help - it is the briefest of dev intros to the RH specific scripting stuff though. And you have to trawl through node.js, electron, and a bunch of other scripting library doco to figure anything out.  🙂

https://helpx.adobe.com/robohelp/user-guide.html

If you wanted to import the docs without tidyng in Word first, and if the styling is as much of a mess as I suspect, you might consider using the "Import inline styles" option to maintain the current look of each document - that way normal text formatted to look like a heading would still look like a heading in the html. It'll be a total mess, but if it's legacy and not intended to be updated, it might be acceptable. 

[Tejas Dandekar]

Thanks for the insight, everyone.

Well, the primary objective is to be able to single-source.

4 o 5 writers ...volume of current and legacy content all in MS word...its assorted not just user manuals its anything and everything can be articles, write-ups, papers, forms, guides, etc. They know they have lot of content common across many many documents and right now they are managing the updates manually. So they are inclined to single-sourcing as the top-most priority. Reorganizing their content/document reporisoty that is on SharePoint is a different game.

[Amebr]

I'll be interested to hear how your scripting goes. Not much experience with the new scripting engine on here, yet. 

[Tejas Dandekar]

Thanks for all the insights. I think the first and foremost would be do they really want to even think about migrating volumes of Word documents to RH or just archive whatever they can and start a fresh with RH, if they decide on RH.

In whatever way, migrating Word to RH will be messy and cannot be  avoided - that is given the volume.

[Peter Grainge]

Without having seen the documents, I think my inclination faced with this task and using RoboHelp would be to look at how well pasting into a topic goes. I would use Pure Text from the Microsoft Store that would paste in the text apply a P tag only. Then apply styles and import images.

Whilst it may sound laborious, any method is going to be and I think that method could overall be easier.

It would be nice if you could give us an update later.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.