RH2019 Word Export Table of Contents requires update fields action in Word, and location of ToC

[wascy]

If I include the TOC in a Word export, when you open the destination Word document you get a dialog, 'This document contains fields that may refer to other files. Do you want to update the fields in this document?' which builds the ToC.

It's not a big deal to open the document, accept the prompt and save but for a large document (almost 1000 pages) it takes a while. Is that expected and is there any way to automate this step? 

Secondly; is it possible to locate the Table of Contents somewhere other than right at the start of the output? I'd like to have a title page first which I can probably acheive with a Word template but the more I can do in RH, the better.

Thanks.

[Amebr]

I can't help with your first question.

Although I've never done it, the help suggests you can include a title page before the toc in Classic, by including a title page document in your project. It seems to have various requirements for content and naming conventions. The quickest way to get to the help for it is to open the output dialog box and click through the wizard to the Print Document Section Layout page, then press F1. When the help opens, click on 2. Page setup.

In new UI, I couldn't see any similar customisation options.

[wascy]

Thanks very much for your reply. We're using the new UI, so I expect a Word template cover page will be the approach for the second question.

[Amebr]

If by "word template cover page" you mean "manually adding a cover page after generation", then yes. 🙂

[wascy]

Thanks, you're right - I used really big first-page only Headers and Footers in the Template to provide a cover page.

Actually new question about indexing. In the old output the Index was just that; a list of headers (I think, maybe keywords of some sort) in alphabetical order with page numbers. If I include an Index in the new UI edition, I just get a list of topics, and another separate hyperlink entry of the same topic wording. Is that something else that's not done in the new UI yet, or a setting I'm missing?

Thanks

[Amebr]

Sorry, I"m not sure. Perhaps look at the Robohelp Reimagined project to see if it provides any information. (I think you should find it in your Documents/My Robohelp Projects folder, but I could be wrong.)

[Peter Grainge]

The dialog is normal and expected.

In Classic versions you had to have Word installed and during the process of creating the document, RoboHelp used Word. As a result Word had seen the document, albeit behind the scenes, so the TOC didn't need updating.

In 2019, you don't have to have Word installed as the import and export does not use Word. That does mean this is the first time Word has seen the document and it seems to be programmed to prompt if it the TOC (which is a field) is out of sync as far as Word is concerned.

You don't get the dialog if you open the document in Libre Office so it looks like a Word thing.

Sorry but at the moment there is no option to move the TOC when generating. You will need to add your cover page post generation.

[wascy]

Thanks Peter.

That makes sense. I haven't used Classic but I had read about the use of Word.

For the cover page I'm using extra-large first page only header and footer. For now I'll open the doc and save it; might try an automation approach later.

[wascy]

Thanks Amebr

I hadn't thought of trying the sample! I'll take a look.

[Peter Grainge]

Sorry but this issue is not covered in the RoboHelp Reimagined sample project.

[wascy]

Thanks again!

I was referring to the index part of the question which I added later in the thread. I should have stayed on topic! Unless that's what you're referring to...

[wascy]

Tested.

The index from the RoboHelp_Reimagined example is also not in the format I'd expect - this is the same as I'm getting for my own project.

Do we know if this is something that's to follow, or a bug I should report?

[Amebr]

Yeah that's not a word index. That's just the html format link list pasted into a Word document.

I personally would report it as I wouldn't considered it acceptable in a Word or PDF output, and the only work around is to manually re-create every index entry in the output so that a proper index can be generated.

[Peter Grainge]

The index bit is showing the index keyword followed by a link to the topic(s) associated with the keyword.

Viewed online that works. Where it falls flat is in a printed document as there is no page number.