How to convert MadCap Doc To Help project (in Nethelp format) to Robohelp?

[lucianamr]

Hi!

I need to have my Madcap Doc-to-help project (in NETHELP format) entirely functional in Robohelp, but I did not find a way to import the entirely project. I have more than 4000 pages, with hyperlinks, glossary terms and context ids.

I can´t simply import the doc files, because I will loose all this resources.

Anyone?

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Never heard of an import for that - you might want to try taking the HTML5 output and reverse engineering a RH project out of it - see Peter's site about that (grainge.org) or there's a paid script from Helpessentials that might be faster.

[Peter Grainge]

John Daigle has a Flare to RoboHelp converter. It is not 100% perfect but it does do a good job with just some tidying up afterwards.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/robohelp/convert-flare-10-project-to-robohelp-11/m-p/7059990#M105369

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www.grainge.org

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

That tool may or may not work - the OP has a Doc-to-Help project, not a Flare one (both owned by MadCap though).

[Peter Grainge]

Oops. Thanks for picking me up on that one Jeff. John's tool is not an option in this case unless, just a wild thought, MadCap can convert a Doc to Help project and then maybe John's converter would work. Long shot.

It might be easier to create a CHM from Doc to Help and reverse engineer that. That usually works OK.

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www.grainge.org

[John28642828q499]

I am in the same boat with ten D2H projects, and MadCap just tells me (after I spent $100 for a support incident) that D2H no longer works with the latest version of Word (I have Office 365), and then tries to upsell me into Flare, which is 400% more expensive than D2H used to be.  So I am now willing to give Adobe my business because it is reasonably priced and supported by a real company.  However there is no reasonable migration path to RoboHelp, and I cannot afford the time to pick up a huge learning curve.

Adobe:  Come on!  Build a convertor, and you can grab D2H's entire customer base!

[Peter Grainge]

RoboHelp has a Word document import feature that I describe at RH2020 Importing/Linking Word/Fm Docs (grainge.org). The process is the same for RoboHelp 2022.

The problem I would expect is that D2H will have heavily marked your Word document in a way that is not going to play nicely with RoboHelp. Some clean up will be required. Also you are converting Word code to HTML, which can be likened to translating Chinese to English.

When RoboHelp imports a Word document, it maps whatever styles it finds in Word to the styles that are defined in the CSS for import. Any it can't map, it adds to a second CSS file. That avoids the CSS being rewritten in the way it used to be that nicely messed up existing topics. However, it does mean a further CSS for each document. Left without further work, your RoboHelp topics may not all look the same. Incorporating the new CSS files into a project CSS is described in the pages above.

It is not going to be quick and easy.

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