Adobe RoboHelp: Custom Search Summaries

by Willam van Weelden  

 

When a reader searches for a topic in your RoboHelp output, RoboHelp shows a small preview of the topic, the so-called search summary:

 

By default, RoboHelp uses the first characters of your topic to automatically create these summaries. As you can see in the example above, the automatically generated search summaries do not give a useful description of the found content.

With RoboHelp 2015, you can provide custom search summaries through the topic comments. To set the search summary, open the topic properties and go to the Status tab. Fill your custom summary in the Comment field.

 

 

Once you have added a custom summary, you need to enable it in the Single Source Layout:

1. Open your Single Source Layout (Output > Generate)
2. Go to the Search section.
3. Select Use Topic Comment as Search Context.
   
    
    
4. Save and Generate the output.

Your output now uses the custom search summaries:

 

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Looking to learn RoboHelp? Come join me for my live, two-day online RoboHelp class (held once each month). And if you'd like to learn more about Dynamic Filters, check out my 3-hour mini course: Adobe RoboHelp: Advanced Content Reuse.