RH8 for Word - Strange page breaks and non-scoll headers

[David Hurlston]

RH8 and Word 2007 generating WinHelp 2000.

Normal page breaks are full page width.

When I insert one in manually, it shows as only 2 inches wide.

A tiopic with this short break does not show as a non-scroll header and does not get included in the browse sequence

Any ideas folks?

[princess_betty · Accepted solution]

Funny you should ask as I've been trying to figure this out too!

This is a Word 2007 issue - I assume you are using Office 2007? I am using RH7, but I believe my solution will work for you because it is Word, not RH.

Anyhow, assuming my Word 2007 assumption is spot-on, you need to change word options.

1. Go to the Office button, select Word Options.
2. Select Advanced.
3. Scroll to bottom of the window and look for Compatibility options (very bottom of the window).
4. Expand the layout options.
5. Check "don't split apart page break and paragraph mark". (You can apply this to the current open doc you see or all docs - if all docs, you will probably change the global normal template, which you may not want to do.)
6. Click Okay.

Note, if you go to recheck the setting, the format is now listed as "custom".

Specifically, what was happening is the page break was taking on a "normal" style with 0pts before and after. This caused for me a big gap between the top of the help window and my heading 1 style. (I have my Heading 1 style set to 6pt before and 2pt after and font is 12pt.) Changing the above makes the page break itself take on the Heading 1 style which then also expands across the draft window instead only a couple inches. Other than affecting how the Heading 1 might appear in the compiled help system, I don't see any probelm with using the page break with the normal style applied to it, however, it is a little disconcerting. I noticed this particularly in the Outline view as I sort the pages in my the doc alphabetically based on Heading 1 so I can locate info easily by client name. When I used the "normal" or should I say "abnormal" style page break, these page breaks were excluded from the sort and I had no page breaks! (At least there is still an undo option!)

I'm not sure, but you may need to modify the robohelp.dot template to keep this permanent for your robohelp for word help systems.

In addition, your heading style probably does not have the paragraph format setting set to "keep with next", so change the style and that should add the non-scroll to the header.

One final piece of advice, have the "developer" tab showing in the ribbon. This allows you to access the template and see the styles in your doc. I would  uncheck the "automatically update" option so that when you reopen the doc, it doesn't lose any doc specific style changes you made.

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[David Hurlston]

Excellent!

That has saved me a lot of head-scratching - many thanks