Category: RoboHelp

Click the Advanced Search button and only web pages that contain the word webdrive and the wording south river technologies will be listed. Select and copy the URL in the address bar to the clipboard (you will be pasting it within RoboHelp shortly).

Using RoboHelp 9, choose View > Pods > Project Setup. Double-click External Content Search to open the External Content Search dialog box.

Click the Add button. Change the Title to webdrive. In the Search Terms field, type webdrive. In the URL field, delete the current entry and paste the URL that you copied from the Google Advanced Search. In the Description field, type Search the web for the term webdrive as it relates to SRT.

On the Single Source Layouts pod, double-click your layout and select the Search group. Then select Enable External Content Search.

Click the Save and Generate button and, when ready, click the View Result button. On the Search tab, type webdrive and press [Enter]. Click the lone result to display the Google Search results.

The thing that I really found cool about RoboHelp's External Content Search, especially using a Search engine results URL, like the one you copied from Google, is that the results will automatically update for your users when Google's search algorithms get updated (which is frequently).

You can decide to save the PDF locally (and later post it to a server) or send it as an e-mail attachment.

Your reviewers must have the Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader 9 or newer to add comments to the PDF. Shown below are the Text Edit options found in Acrobat 9.

The Text Edit tools were used to cross out some text and replace one word with another in the image below.

One of the most common ways to add new content to a RoboHelp project is by importing a Word document via File > Import > Word Document. If the Word document contains a TOC, Headers, Footers or Index, they will import nicely into RoboHelp. However, during the import process, it's highly likely that you will end up with one, large topic in RoboHelp instead of several small ones. So how do you instruct RoboHelp to create several topics out of the one Word document? Read on…

During the import process you will be working within an Import dialog box. The dialog box gives you access to options that control how the Word document will be formatted as it is imported into RoboHelp. All you need to do is click the Edit button you will see to the right of Word Document: Edit conversion settings for Word documents.

After clicking the Edit button, your Word document will be scanned and the Conversion Settings dialog box will appear. This is where you can control which paragraphs in the Word document will be paginated into new topics.

From the Word Document Settings area, select the style or styles that you used in the Word document to be used as new topics. For instance, Heading 1 is typically used in Word to designate main sections in the document. In that case, you would select Heading 1 from the list of Word styles.

Next, select Pagination from the list of options in the middle of the dialog box. 

By selecting Pagination for specific Word styles, RoboHelp will create a new topic every time it sees that Heading 1 was used in the Word document.

After that, all you'd need to do is click the OK button and then the Finish button and the Word document will be imported into RoboHelp. Once the import process is complete, you will find your new topics on RoboHelp's Topic List pod.

If you have ever used Microsoft Word to record or write a macro using Visual Basic, you already appreciate how much time macros can save you by automating repetitive tasks.

While RoboHelp does not support macros, scripts (which are coded instructions) provide the same functionality. RoboHelp ships with a few helpful scripts and if you are an application developer, you can create your own scripts from within RoboHelp or import them.

Run a Word Count Script

 

1. Open a RoboHelp project
2. Open the Script Explorer by choosing View > Pods > Script Explorer

   The Script Explorer pod appears at the far right of the window by default.

   

3. Click the plus sign to the left of the Sample Scripts folder to expand the folder
4. On the Script Explorer pod, right-click the Word Count.jsx script and choose Run

   The word count is quickly completed and the total Word Count appears at the bottom of the Output View pod.

   

Edit a Script

Okay, so the word count script you just learned about is nice and all, but hardly anything to write home about. Get your pen and paper out… this next script rocks.

How many times have you found a web address in your project that wasn't correct? And how many times has that Web address needed to be corrected in multiple locations? This next script will let you fix URLs project-wide.

 

1. On the Script Explorer pod, right-click the Link Converter.jsx script and choose Edit

   The Extend Script Toolkit opens.

2. On line 10 of the script, replace http://www.oldurl.com with the address you want the script to find and correct
3. Replace http://www.newurl.com with the correct address

   

4. Save and close the script (choose File > Save and then choose File > Exit)
5. On the Script Explorer pod, right-click the Link Converter.jsx script and choose Run

   Any files using the incorrect Web address are opened and corrected. You will be prompted to save each file that has been edited.

Need to learn RoboHelp… and fast? Join my live, two-day RoboHelp class later this month.

I received an email from a RoboHelp developer who was faced with a daunting task. He needed to post a copy of his generated RoboHelp project to three servers within his corporation. His RoboHelp project was large and consisted of thousands of topics, tens of thousands of images and other assets.

The process of copying and pasting the contents of his generated layout (he was generating WebHelp) wasn't a difficult chore, but it was time-consuming. After generating his Help System, he went into the SSL (Single Source Layouts) folder within the project folder, copied the generated Help System files and pasted them onto the first server. After the process was complete, and assuming there were no read/write errors, he went to the next drive and pasted, and so on and so on.

The Help System consisted of such a large number of files, it took a long time for the copying process to conclude. And due to server limitations, he couldn't simply paste the files onto all three servers at one time and walk away. In essence, he had to babysit the publishing process.

Compounding the problem was the fact that when he made even simple changes to any of the topics within the Help System and re-generated, he had to go through the copy/paste routine all over again.

The developer was hoping for a better solution, one that would give him his life back. And I was happy to introduce him to multi-server publishing.

You can easily create multiple servers within RoboHelp and publish your projects to those servers, one after the other. You can accomplish this publishing feat with a minimum of clicks, and without having to babysit the process. What could be better? Actually, plenty. If, down the road, you make changes to any of your topics, regenerate and then republish, only the updated content will be added to the servers.

Here's how you can publish one project to multiple servers:

1. Show the Properties of either WebHelp or FlashHelp.
2. Click the Next button until you end up on the last screen (the Publish dialog box).
3. Click the New button to open the New Destination dialog box.
4. If you are planning to drop your Help System files on a drive within your own network, select File System as the Connection Protocol.
5. Give the server any name you like.
6. Type or browse for a folder on your server where you will be publishing your project and then click the OK button.

   

7. Click the New button again and create as many destination
   servers as you need.

   

8. When finished, click the Save button.
9. Generate your layout and, when the Results screen appears, click the Publish button.

   

   And Bam! Your Help System files will be published to all of your servers (anywhere in the world), one after the other. And if you want to get totally knocked off your feet, go ahead and make a change to any of your topics. Then generate and re-publish. You'll see that only the files that have changed (and a few support files) are re-published.

Need to learn RoboHelp… and fast? Join my live, two-day RoboHelp class later this week.