Adobe RoboHelp 8: What’s Another Word for Easy? How About Synonyms?

by Kevin A. Siegel

Creating an Index in RoboHelp is as simple as opening the Index folder, double-clicking the default index, right-clicking within the Index pod and then selecting Smart Index Wizard. A few clicks later, you'll have an Index pod full of keywords that have been magically associated with topics in your project.

Will the Smart Index Wizard create an Index that's ready to be generated? Um, sorry… but not likely. After running the Smart Index Wizard, you will likely have to scroll through the resulting Index and remove several keywords (especially if you select Automatically add index keywords for all topics from the How do you want to add index keywords? area of the Smart Index Wizard).

One key to creating an effective Index is adding synonyms to the Index as keywords that will get your customer's to the topic they were looking for. What's that you say? You're not synonym-savvy and creating them is a chore? You don't have a thesaurus handy? No worries… read on and learn how RoboHelp can help create synonyms on the fly.

Add Synonym's as Index Keywords

Open or create a RoboHelp project.
Open the Index.
Right-click within the Index and choose Smart Index Wizard.
Click Next to move to the second screen of the Smart Index Wizard.
Select Confirm adding index keywords for each topic from the How do you want to add index keywords? area.
Click the Next button.
Select a keyword (put a check in the box).
Click the Options button at the right and select Synonyms from the drop-down menu.
Select a Category from the list at the left.
Select a Synonym from the list of Synonyms at the right.
Click the Add to Topic button.
Click the Close button.
Notice that the Synonym has been added to the list of keywords. If you leave the keyword selected, it will appear on the Index pod.