Table Problems after Word Export from RH8

[James_Gage]

I am running RoboHelp HTML 8 as part of Technical Communications Suite 2 on Windows XP Professional and exporting to Word 2007. This is a recent upgrade. Previously, I was just running RoboHelp 8 without TCS. All of the Adobe software is completely patched and up-to-date.

The help system I am converting to Word is large and results in over 600 pages of Word content with a lot of tables (generally just for data presentation and not layout purposes). I'm also using build tags and single-sourcing this document to another, shorter document that is over 400 pages long.

I have exported various documents from RoboHelp to Word many, many times before, and although I don't like the amount of reformatting I have to do, I'm used to the effort involved. However, the behavior seems to have changed recently.

These days (possibly after the conversion to TCS?), after I export the help system to Word, all tables are set to have the text wrap around them (Table Properties | Table | Text wrapping | Around). Before, this setting always defaulted to no wrapping. I wouldn't mind this, because I could simply set the tables to have no wrapping, but even after I do so, the full functionality of tables is still not available to me. For example, I can't set to header row to repeat across pages (Layout ribbon | Repeat Header Rows). I also can't set rows to not break across pages (Table Properties | Row | Allow to break across pages). In fact, I can't select a single row of the table generally without selecting the entire table. My coworker found out that you can copy each table into Word Pad and then copy it back into Word as a workaround, but that is extremely tedious. We already waste a lot of time reformatting these documents for various other reasons.

As a (probably irrelevant) footnote, I convert to .doc rather than .docx, because RoboHelp crashes when I export to .doc. I then save the .doc as a .docx file to conserve file size. The same problem exists in both file formats.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

[James_Gage]

Not to belabor my footnote, but I meant to say that RoboHelp crashes when I convert to .docx, not .doc. I don't think that's part of the problem, so feel free to ignore this correction to my footnote.

[Peter Grainge]

Am I understanding correctly that when you have got the document into Word, you cannot then set a table to have heading rows repeat? Also you cannot select any row of a table, only the whole table?

I am producing some similar size documents and with lots of tables. Nothing has changed for me in 8 or 9, in both cases as part of the respective TCS and the various flaours of Word. Colleagues working with the standalone versions are also not having these issues. Finally the bit of news you really don't want, in all the years I have supported the forums, I have never seen this reported.

Exporting to DOCX I think has been reported as a problem but this is also occurring when you convert to DOC.

My start point here would be to import one topic with a table into a brand new project and see if this problem occurs. First output using the CSS option, then with the supplied Style Mapping template and finally with the template you are using in the problem project. Try those tests and see where it gets you, then post back.

There are some Word macros on my site including one that will scroll through all the tables and apply whatever formatting you want to it. Saves a lot of time.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[James_Gage]

Hi, Peter. Thank you for your thoughtful response.

Yes, after exporting to Word, I couldn't set the tables' heading rows to repeat and couldn't select individual rows. Also, if I selected the entire table, normally Word would offer me the option to convert the table to text. However, Word seems to think that the table isn't a table, so instead it offers me the option to convert the text to a table. Good times. 🙂

I write the above in the past tense, however, because I discovered a solution. I found a table in the Word output that didn't have the problem, possibly the only one of its kind in the project. In RoboHelp, I compared the HTML source of that table to a table that did have the problem. I discovered that the problematic table had two HTML tags that the unproblematic table did not: <?rh-align_start align="left" ?> and <?rh-align_end ?>. I deleted the tags and presto! The problem was fixed for this table in the Word output. This worked for a couple of other bad tables as well, so I decided to do a global find and replace. Using Find and replace in files in RoboHelp, I replaced each of these tags with nothing (i.e., a null value, essentially deleting them). Searching for the entire string didn't detect all instances, so I searched again for "rh-align" only and found about 50 instances, which I manually corrected in the HTML source.

So far, so good!

I didn't try the options you suggested, but I was suspecting a template problem as well. Thank God it wasn't because I wasn't relishing the prospect of tracking that down.

And yes! We tried your macros. Actually, the world-class tech writer Sue McKinney, who works with me, tried it, and she says it took three minutes to reformat the rows in the tables so they wouldn't break, which is a requirement of ours. We look forward to implementing the other table-related macro functionality you developed. Thanks for providing it for our use!