RoboHelp menu missing or weird toolbar!

Report · May 27, 2009

running robohelp for word version 8 on Vista with office 2003. It was working, but suddenly when i open a document from the project explorer the RoboHelp menu is either missing or when i click on it i get a small toolbar of the robohelp tools where the menu should be. When the robohelp menu is missing i get the Adobe PDF and Acrobat Comments menus instead... also the extra menu items on other menus are missing. Usually if i open a 2nd document while the one with the Adobe menus is open i get the Robohelp menu with the toolbar instead of menu items. Weird. How do i get back to the proper menu???

Report · May 27, 2009

Hi there

Please note that many of us abandoned RoboHelp for Word many years ago. So we have an ever shrinking body of knowledge surrounding that product. If you are creating HTML based output, you would be well advised to consider using RoboHelp HTML.

Have you tried simply closing all of it down and restarting? That seems to cure a lot of things with different applications so maybe it will work here?

Cheers... Rick

Report · May 28, 2009

I understand the reality of RoboHelp for Word being abandoned; however, if Adobe is going to sell the product and support it in Windows Vista ... my expectation is that it should work.

Report · May 28, 2009

Yes, I tried closing it down and restarting. I even tried rebooting (i've been around windows for a while). I did some more searches and found a 2006 or so message about the same thing that pointed to the dot file. So i went and restored an older version which didn't help. Then i tries going into the addon organizer as suggested by someone else in that thread and sometimes it helps... sometimes it brings back 2 menu entries, other times the whole menu shows up... i just don't have time to fight with word now so i imported it into robohelp html, i'll loose a day or two cleaning up stuff it didn't import properly but at least it is a self contained program rather than relying on some flakey interface with ms word.

Report · May 28, 2009

To be honest David I think you have taken the best approach. Winhelp has a dwindling user base and can't be viewed in Vista (although you can download the required WinHlp32.exe file to enable you to do so). The short term pain of converting into RH HTML will be worth the effort in the longer term.

Read the RoboColum(n) for mutterings on RoboHelp, Technical Communication Suite and technical communication.

Report · May 28, 2009

I had already changed the target to html help, but prefered using word as an editor because i was more familiar with it.

Report · May 28, 2009

Hi David

I think you will find (As I did years ago) that you won't really miss the Word interface all that much. The RoboHelp HTML interface is very "Word like" and offers you capabilites that you would struggle with in Word.

The hardest change for me was that when I developed WinHelp, I was addicted to the Non-Scrolling regions offered by that output. They were like Crack to me! (I guess - I've heard it's something folks really struggle to break a habit from)

@Write Guy - I do agree with you. If a product is being marketed, it is expected to work. I wasn't being an apologist. I was being a realist and attempting to provide a heads up that an answer likely won't be forthcoming in rapid order as there probably would be if RoboHelp HTML were being used.

I think RoboHelp for Word is similar to a dying patient. It's on extended life support. There are still a few straggling relatives that visit from time to time, but most have said their goodbyes and are now awaiting the funeral. I didn't say that to imply I have any inside information. I don't. It's just a gut feeling. I've used RoboHelp since 1992. I started with RoboHelp for Word. Help authors used to scream bloody murder because eHelp would introduce updates and upgrades to RoboHelp too soon. What many didn't realize what the updates were often driven by Microsoft's changes to Word. So any time you can free up a product from a dependency upon another product you cannot control, it's good news and should be seriously considered.

As Colum said, Vista introduced the big scare into folks with their initial claims that WinHelp would stop working in Vista. But the 16 bit WinHelp works fine with Vista out of the box and if you want the 32 bit variety it may be had for the price of a brief download.

Happy Thursday all... Rick