Pagination and topic naming in converted Word files

In addition to splitting the document into topics and defining topic naming settings, you can do the following:

Convert header and footer

Header and footer text in your word documents is converted and used in the Help topics. See Convert headers and footers in Word documents.

Convert TOC and index entries

TOC and index entries in the Word document are converted in your RoboHelp project. See Importing a Word TOC, index, and glossary.

Map Word list styles to RoboHelp styles

You can convert the list styles in Word to either RoboHelp list styles or HTML list styles. See List mapping.

Automatically create CSS styles from inline formatting

See Create RoboHelp styles from inline formatting.

Set pagination for online Help topics

When you import a Word document, you define how the contents of the Word file appear as topics in RoboHelp. For example, suppose your Word file contains ten topics. If each topic contains subtopics, definition lists, tasks, and tables, you can have each topic appear as a separate HTML file. If each of these topic headings is in Heading 1 style, you can have each Heading 1 topic created as a separate HTML topic. If, however, you set the pagination at Heading 2, separate HTML files are created for each Heading 2 topic.

You can select multiple paragraph styles for pagination. For example, selecting Heading 1 and Heading 2 for pagination, causes RoboHelp to start a new topic at every instance of Heading 1 as well as Heading 2.

note: Pagination is based on the Word paragraph styles and not on RoboHelp styles. The text of the Word paragraph style is included by default in the filename of the HTML topic file created. Any non-ASCII characters in the topic file name are automatically converted to ASCII characters.

Even though you can set pagination for any Word paragraph style, the topic generated must contain relevant, complete information for the reader. For example, if you set pagination for Heading 3, you run the risk of creating topics with only task-level instructions. In this case, the required contextual information required to complete the task is isolated in another Heading 3 level topic. To avoid such disjointed, incomplete topics, set the pagination at a higher level.

1)Do one of the following:

•Select Project > Import > Word Document.

•Select Project > Link > Word File .

•Select Project > Project Settings .

2)Click Edit under Word Document.

3)In the Conversion Settings dialog box, in the Paragraph group, select the paragraph style on which to base pagination.

4)Select the option marked Pagination (Split into topics based on this style) and click OK.

RoboHelp splits the documents into topics using the specified pagination styles.

Convert context-sensitive Help markers in Word to map IDs

You can convert the context-sensitive Help markers that you insert in your Microsoft Word documents and reuse them as map IDs. You insert the context-sensitive markers using the Custom Footnote option in Word. You insert context-sensitive Help markers using the Insert Footnotes And Endnotes dialog box in Word. To insert context-sensitive Help markers, enter a custom string such as TopicAlias and then insert the map ID as the marker text. The custom string must not contain spaces or any other invalid characters. See Microsoft Word Help for more information about inserting custom footnote markers.

Sometimes Word documents that you are linking to or importing have context-sensitive Help markers. If so, you can incorporate them in the map ID header file that you generate. In the project header file, add the map IDs that you assigned to topics in your Word documents. The context-sensitive marker string is a project-wide parameter. Ensure that all Word documents that you link to or import contain the same string as the context-sensitive marker text.

1)Do one of the following:

•Select Project > Import > Word Document.

•Select Project > Link > Word File .

•Select Project > Project Settings .

2)Click Edit under Word Document.

3)In the Conversion Settings dialog box, in the Other Settings group, enter the context-sensitive Help marker string and click OK.

Define the topic name pattern for generated topics

When you set heading styles for pagination, the heading text is included by default in the filename of the topic file created in RoboHelp. For example, suppose you define Heading 2 for pagination. If the Word document has two Heading 2 topics, “Introduction” and “Beyond basics,” the topics are created as files named introduction.htm and beyond_basics.htm. The result is intuitively named HTML files that indicate the topic title. In addition to this default scheme, you can define more naming conventions. If, however, the Help system uses sequentially numbered files, such as helptopic001.html, helptopic002.html, and so on, you can define the pattern to support that convention.

1)Do one of the following:

•Select Project > Import > Word Document.

•Select Project > Link > Word File .

•Select Project > Project Settings .

2)In the Conversion Settings dialog box, select Other Settings.

3)In the Other Settings tab, set the topic name pattern.

Topics are named according to the selected pattern. You can select one of the following or create a topic name pattern.

Default	Uses the topic title text as the topic filename.
<$filename_no_ext>-<$paratext>	The name of the converted HTML topic contains the following: •The name of the Word source file without its extension •Hyphen as the separator •Paragraph text used to demarcate HTML topics For example, a Word file named “Chapter.doc” with “1-Introduction” as paragraph text is converted to an HTML topic named “Chapter-1-Introduction.”
<$filename_no_ext>-<n>	The name of the converted HTML topic contains the following: •The name of the Word source file without its extension •Hyphen as the separator •A sequential number For example, “Chapter.doc” is converted to an HTML topic named “Chapter-1.”
<$paratext_no_num>	The name of the converted HTML topic contains the paragraph text used to demarcate the HTML topic, without numbering. For example, paragraph text “1.Introduction” is converted to an HTML topic named “Introduction.”.
<$paratext>	The name of the converted HTML topic contains the paragraph text used to demarcate the HTML topic. For example, paragraph text “Introduction” is converted into an HTML topic named “Introduction.”