ADOBE ROBOHELP: Master Projects and Merging Help Content

You've got two RoboHelp projects. The projects have been maintained independently for years, but now you need to combine them.   One strategy for combining multiple RoboHelp projects into one is to simply import all of the assets from one project into the other. If you go that route, one of the original project(s) would no longer be needed.   However, if you want to keep the projects working as independent projects but have them share content, a TOC, and an Index, you've created the perfect scenario for project merging.   To merge projects, create child RoboHelp projects as you normally would. In this example, I've created two child projects. One project is about dogs. The second project is about cats. The goal is to combine the child projects into a third project called Cats and Dogs. The third project is the master or parent project.   In the image below you can see a sample Cats project I created with placeholder content. The project includes a small Table of Contents. Because this project is going to be added to a master project, let's call it Child 1.

In the image below you can see a simple Dogs project. It also has placeholder content and a simple Table of Contents. This is Child 2.

Now for the master or parent project. A master project does not need much content. Keep in mind that its main role is to allow you to combine content from child projects.

To allow the master project to combine assets from child projects, I went to the Table of Contents panel and clicked New Merged Project.

In the Merged Project dialog box, I opened each child project. You can see in the image below that I've loaded the Cats project. I repeated the process for the Dogs project.

On the Table of Contents for the master project, the child projects are shown as merged project icons (as shown in the image below).

Generate and Publish the master project.   When you browse to the published destination, you'll see that RoboHelp has automatically created a mergedProjects folder. This folder is key. All that you need to do now is publish each chlid project into this folder.

Back in each child project, access the Publish settings, create a new Server, and publish each child project to the mergedProjects folder for the master project.

When you open the start page for the parent project (from the Publish destination folder), the three projects have been merged into one. On the TOC shown below, the first page is the only topic that was in the master project. The remaining content on the TOC came from the child projects.

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Kevin Siegel is the founder and president of IconLogic, Inc. He has written hundreds of step-by-step computer training books on applications such as Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, Adobe RoboHelp, Adobe Presenter, and TechSmith Camtasia. Kevin spent five years in the U.S. Coast Guard as an award-winning photojournalist and has three decades’ experience as a trainer, publisher, technical writer, and eLearning developer. Kevin is a Certified Master Trainer (CMT), Certified Technical Trainer (CTT+), Certified Online Professional Trainer (COTP), and a frequent speaker at trade shows and conventions.