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Participating Frequently
March 15, 2009
Question

RoboHelp for Word cannot open Word with Word 2007

  • March 15, 2009
  • 1 reply
  • 2215 views
Thanks for your leignancy, I'm having trouble even starting to work with RoboHelp. I think I need detailed explanations. I did spend hours sifting through Robohelp's Help and this Forum, I'm stuck.

I am trying to use RoboHelp for Word 7.0 , build 001, with Word 2007 on Vista.

I need to work on help projects created with a previous version of RoboHelp.

For some reason, when I open RoboHelp, the .doc file opens in Word next to it, but then RoboHelp freezes for several minutes, then I get a dialog box that says "RoboHelp" could not open Word .

Then anytime I try to modify a topic in my help file, I get the same stall and error message, and my Word document stays stuck at the beginning on my first topic.

Also, in Word, all Robohelp options don't work. I can't search for a topic for instance to locate it and modify it. When I click on search for a topic from the menu on top, nothing happens at all. If I click on search a topic from the right-click menu, then I get a message that because of security or confidentiality settings, the Macros don't work.

I tried re-activating all Macros in Word 2007 Options, I closed everything, even re-booted the computer, but to no avail.

Also, I tried saving my .doc into a .docx (Word 2007 format) to see if the Macros would be compatible then, but I got the exact same results.

Right now, RoboHelp and Word don't seem to be "talking" to each other right, and the Macros don't work.

Plus: I tried to test a modification I made in the .doc file by generating the WebHelp, but that didn't work either, I got an error message saying that the file couldn't be opened, but the path to the file was all wrong, with folder names I don't even have on my computer.

If someone could figure this one out for me, I'd be very thankful, I'm the kind of person who likes something to work in a simple, linear way, 1-2-3... This is totally confusing for me right now.
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1 reply

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 15, 2009
You need to set the macro options in Word to the lowest level.

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Participating Frequently
March 15, 2009
Ok, isn't that what I did when I re-activated the Macros in Word 2007?

Word Options / security - confidentiality center / Parameters / Activate all Macros (the lowest one on the list)

Did that already. Also, I made backups of my projects, and tried with a new "brew" just in case I had messed it up along the way somewhere.

First thing I did when I opened it again was change the output to WebHelp instead of WinHelp 4, since I can't open that in Vista anymore.

I can generate the help in that format, but either way I try to make any modification it's not taken into account when I generate it.

Example:
In the french help project which I'm working on, I had a tittle that was miss-spelled.
I tried modifying in in the Word .doc document, then generate the help, but the title was still wrong.

So I tried changing in directly in Robohelp with the topic's properties.
When I clicked OK, it stalled forever again, and then it said it couldn't take the modifications into account.

And any text I cut and paste or changed in the .doc on Word remains unchanged in the WebHelp....

Right now, the more I try, the more I'm stuck and the more questions I get. I'm seriously thinking I'd need some live coaching, on a chat or something, to get me started on the right track. Is there anyone who can do that? I'm so awfully stuck right now. And I feel like I'd unfurl a tsunami of ridiculous questions if I posted them all on the Forum now...



*EXTRA*
I did all the updates (7.0.3) and right now I'm re-installing everything.
Arghhh.
I missed one of the last days of ski this season, spent my whole week-end with this.
I'm trying to sound rational and calm, but I'm actually so tired and exasperated, I'd have jumped through the window already if we weren't on the first floor... Still stuck at Step 1...


What am I missing??
RoboWizard
Inspiring
March 15, 2009
Thanks for thye suggestion, will consider it in the future probably, but right now we had determined using RoboHelp for Word was the best solution since we could send just the .doc to be translated and then copy it back into our projects. At least that's what I was told.

So right now, I'd really like to be able to make RoboHelp work as it should. I'm not even yet trying to do anything complicated, just simply opening a project. I cant, edit anything at all, it's not compiled.

That's really rendering the whole thing pretty useless right now. And I may not be real good at programming or anything, but I have a natural-born talent for finding lots of bugs, that's why I always do the bêta-testing here. But it's really a pain in the *** when I need to do something efficiently and fast and nothing seems to work as it should...

Hi again

Are you having issues with your source document? The one you send to the translators? Or is it only after the document has been translated and you try to bring that back in to influence changes?

My thought here is that if the issues seem to only occur with translated documents, perhaps the translators are negatively influencing the embedded coding RoboHelp is expecting.

Cheers... Rick