This procedure applies to HTML Help, WebHelp, FlashHelp, Adobe AIR Application, and browser-based Adobe AIR projects.
1)Create the master project and the projects that you want to merge.
tip: For ease of maintenance, the master project should ideally be an empty container or only have a default topic. The child projects should store all the content. For more information, see Which project works best as the master project? in FAQs about merging projects.
2)Open the master project. In the default topic, add the content that you want to display on the home page of the merged Help.
3)Select a skin. The skin of the master project is used as the skin of the merged Help.
4)Do one of the following:
•Select the default TOC of the master project from the Project Manager pod.
•Create a TOC for the master project.
5)To insert child projects, place your cursor in the TOC.
6)On the TOC pod, click the New Merged Project icon.
7)Do one of the following:
•For HTML Help projects, click the HTML Help tab in the Merged project dialog box.
•For WebHelp/FlashHelp/Adobe AIR projects, click the WebHelp/FlashHelp/Adobe AIR tab.
8)Do one of the following:
•For HTML Help projects, select a CHM file that is already in the current project folder or browse to the location of the CHM file.
An icon with the filename is displayed in the TOC pod where you inserted the child projects. The filename is the format <CHM file> .chm::/<CHM file>.hhc. The HHC file represents the TOC of the merged CHM file. This icon appears where the TOCs of the child projects occur in the merged project. If needed, you can drag the icon to another location in the TOC and drop it into place.
•For WebHelp/FlashHelp/Adobe AIR projects, enter the name of a RoboHelp project (XPJ) or click Open to browse to the project file.
In case of WebHelp/FlashHelp/Adobe AIR projects, the placeholder appears as the name of the project.
9)Generate the master project.
When a project having merged project references in its TOC is generated, a folder "mergedProjects" appears in the SSL output folder. The mergedProjects folder contains a folder for each referenced child project. In the case of WebHelp/FlashHelp/Adobe AIR, the corresponding child project has to be generated in its own folder.
note: The name mergedProjects is reserved. Do not give any folder in the project folder the name mergedProjects.
10)In the Result dialog, click View to see the results and test the merged project.
•Merged HTML Help projects use non-binary contents files (HHC). The names of the compiled output file (CHM) and contents file (HHC) cannot include spaces. (To find out if they have spaces, look at them in your project folder in Windows Explorer. Do not rename the files in Windows Explorer, however.) If either of the filenames has spaces, open the project and rename the project file. Then, generate the project and change the name of the output file (CHM file). The HHC filename is updated automatically when you change the project name.
•Do not assign the Binary TOC feature to your project. If you do, the external TOCs are not displayed in the Contents tab in the HTML Help viewer.
•If you generate a WebHelp/FlashHelp/Adobe AIR output using a skin, the skin from the master project overrides the skin of the child project in the merged project. If you access the projects individually outside the merged project, the project-specific skin is used.
•If you need to add cross-project links, make sure you set up the folder structure for source projects in the same way as the folder structure of the generated and published files.
Otherwise, while hyperlinking, you need to manually construct the URL based on the folder structure of the generated and published files and specify in the Link To text box. For detailed steps, see this article.