Can I apply one .css stylesheet to all of my linked word documents inside my RoboHelp8 HTML project?

Question

Hello all,
I am on my fourthRoboHelp8 HTML project, after the other three crashed. I am a technical writer constructing my companies Policy and Procedures Guide. I am only 142 (word documents) and 9 (RoboHelp topics) into my project and there will be plenty more to come. I recently took Kevin Siegel's RoboHelp8 class where I determined that it would be best if I link all of my word documents inside of the Project Manager becuase I will be constantly updating these documents. I've searched around the Adobe Forums, talked to Kevin, and talked to my IT Department, but I cannot seem to find an answer for my problem.
I have linked all of 142 word documents inside of the Project Manager, and all 142 word documents have their own .css stylesheet. I have assigned the default.css stylesheet (which I have assigned all of the proper formatting to headings 1-4 to match headings 1-4 inside of my Microsoft Word 2007 documents) under Project Settings under the Import tab. I also assigned this default.css stylesheet under WebHelp Pro. My understanding with applying the default.css stylesheet to these two places is that all of my word documents and topics should have this stylesheet applied to them.
However, when I look at each individual linked word document the default stylesheet has not been assigned and the word document is still being dictated by its own stylesheet i.e. Credit.css. On my third project, before it crashed, I manually went through all 142 word documents in the Project Manager and assigned the default.css stylesheet to them. I did this by right clicking on the topic, under Appearance, I changed the stylesheet i.e. Credit.css to default.css and clicked apply. I was immediately prompted with the two options: "Preserve modifications to this file" or "Don't show me this message again." I tried both options. The first applied the default.css stylesheet and removed the Credit.css stylesheet, but when I made a change inside of my word document and updated it inside of the Project Manager none of my changes appeared. The second did not apply the default.css stylesheet and kept my Credit.css stylesheet applied to my word document. When I made a change inside of my word document and updated it inside of the Project Manager the change appeared.
I talked about this to Kevin and he said that the individual stylesheet applied to each linked word document did not mean anything, essentially that by making the default.css stylesheet the dominant stylesheet under Project Settings under Import that the stylesheet would be applied to all of my linked word documents/topics. He also suggested that I make a change to the stylesheet like change the color of Heading 1 and link a new word document to see if it applied the changes. I tried doing this inside of my third project, but nothing changed.
I would like to know if I can assign one stylesheet to all of my linked word documents before I get too far into the fourth project and have that project crash on me too. One of RoboHelp's appealing features is to apply one stylesheet to multiple topics, or in my case 142 word documents and 9 topics. I hope that I can apply one stylesheet to all of these linked word documents because having 142 individual stylesheets is unmanageable.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Roxxanne

Answer 1

When a word document is imported into RoboHelp project, RoboHelp generates a separate stylesheet for each word document as each word document may have its own formatting styles. In a generic scenario, word documents may be brought from different sources and may have different styling. Hence, RoboHelp allows users to preserve different styling through sepearate stylesheets.
However, for a different scenario like yours, RoboHelp allows users to override all the CSS and apply a single CSS to all the topics at the generation of output. As you have already mentioned that you have applied default.css in the WebHelp Pro SSL dialog, that should suffice and should meet your requirement of applying a single CSS to all the topics. You can verify the same at your end by linking few word files and generating the output with a single CSS applied in the SSL settings.
Mayank