RoboHelp chm to Word doc

How can I convert a RoboHelp chm file to a Word document? I am working with RoboHelp HTML 6.
Is there any free software that does this?
Thanks,
Judy

Hi Judy.
A quick google of "CHM to Word" reveals many freeware/shareware applications for this purpose. I'm not sure of the results though. I suspect some shareware apps have a watermark on them in the trial versions. If none of these meet your requirements, you could decompile the CHM using the HTML Help Studio tool in RH6. From this you can create a new project and import the HTM files from which you could use the Printed Documentation single source layout to create your Word document.
Read the RoboColum(n) for a tips, tricks and musings on the Technical Communication Suite products.
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Similar Messages

Issues with importing word docs into robohelp 10

I currently have an issue when I try to import a 'saved as: 97-2003' or 'MS Word' doc or docx into Robohelp 10, I receive the following error:
Any assistance with this would be appreciated.
In the meantime I've been converting everything from a doc/docx format to a pdf and then importing.
However, it would be nice to know why I can't perform the task as I have shared
PS...
With regards to the error statement: "Please install Microsoft Word 2000 or newer"? I have Microsoft Office 2013 installed (and not the student or home version). "I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed", so to speak but I would think that Word 2013 would pacify the requirement of MS Word 2000 or newer...?
Thanks.
Message was edited by: Words2Technology

The message is wrong in terms of the version specified. It is correct though that you do not have a supported version as Word 2013 is not supported.
Subject to licencing, you can have both 2010 and 2013 installed, then run 2010 before doing anything where Rh needs to talk to Word.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

CPU Usage - Generating Word Docs from RoboHelp X5

If you have generated a fair-sized document through RoboHelp,
and you are having problems with your CPU usage pegging out around
100%, bouncing up and down between 50% and 100%, the page
repainting as you scroll through the document, etc., this solution
is for you!
I am using RoboHelp X5 to generate large Word documents
(2003). This solution worked perfect for me. The problem is with
document corruption, apparently. After you have generated your Word
document and opened the document, be sure to display the paragraph
marks. You will probably see the “]” mark at or near
the end of the document. Select your entire document,
except for the final paragraph mark, making sure to exclude
this symbol, and copy everything else. Open a blank Word document
and paste this content into the new document.
You will now need to reattach your template (.dot) file for
the generated document through Tools/Templates and Addins:
1. Locate the applicable document template and attach it
(it's typically in the base generated project directory in RoboHelp
- .dot file). Click the OK button to save.
2. Return to Tools/Templates and Addins. Click the Organizer
button to display the Styles tab.
3. In the right-hand list (In Normal.dot), Close the
Normal.dot file
4. Open the same RoboHelp .dot template as you selected
previously.
4. Select all of the styles once they display in the right
pane and click the <<Copy button to copy them all over to the
document template. Confirm that you want to replace all styles in
the document.
5. Close the menu using the Close button. The dialog closes
and your styles should all be updated, if your styles were set up
appropriately via template and style sheet settings.
You may need to also adjust the Page Setup page width
settings, if necessary.
Good luck!
Liz0259

Peter:
Thank you for responding to me, as I may not have been clear
enough, and I apologize for that. I was trying to keep it short and
sweet. This problem started when I began using RoboHelp X5 this
year.
To clarify...
- I'm not concerned with CPU usage during document
generation, that is to be expected. The document will need to be
generated originally from a RoboHelp WebHelp project. This does not
change. The problem takes place AFTER you generate a large document
and then open it in MS Word.
- My documents are large, 140-500 pages. It took forever to
scroll through the Word document (RoboHelp-generated), the screen
kept repainting, and the CPU usage stuck fluctuating frequently
between 50% and 100%, not allowing me to do much else. Editing
those documents was a nightmare. Even if I shut down all other
programs.
- Something translates to the Word doc from RoboHelp that
maxes out the CPU usage, and I can't locate the exact culprit.
However, it appears to be tied to the faded "]" symbol at the end
of the document (there is a "[" at the beginning, too). So you have
to omit more than the last paragraph mark; that symbol also needs
to be left out.
- The "corruption" information came from Microsoft; it could
be something other than that, but this is what they said. I found
nothing that would help on the RoboHelp forum, so I went to
Microsoft to see if they had a solution. Apparently, this is a
common problem with Word 2003, but the articles didn't mention
RoboHelp in the issues. I tried this solution, adding the omission
of the "[" symbol, with complete success.
- When you copy the document without the last paragraph mark,
it will still include the headers/footers when you paste it
(although you may need to adjust them slightly). This is not the
problem.
- When a document is generated, you can select to use a MS
Word template, which I do. I fully use the style sheets in
RoboHelp, and they match my Word styles (template) to keep things
in sync. Actually, this Word template remains in the project; it is
not moved to the folder that holds your Normal.dot file. So the
link to the template in RoboHelp from your document does in fact
remain intact. However, you can copy that template to another
folder outside the project and link it from there, but it won't
matter.
- The Word template (.dot) needs to be reapplied in order to
restore your styles, as the Normal.dot styles are applied when you
copy the content over to a new document. It doesn't matter where
you store the template. I reapply this SAME template after I copy
and paste the content into the new document. This is not the cause
of the problem. Note: The application of a template is not the same
thing as going back to the master copy. This is still a fresh
document, with the content pasted in and the same template applied.
- I have tried deleting the local copy and starting over. I
have moved the file to another location. I have renamed or created
a 'save-as' copy of the file. I tried editing out any extra
un-necessary merge-tags in Word, looked for macros, etc. All of
these things do not resolve the CPU Usage problem.
I hope this makes more sense. You can try it out if you wish,
but you will need to do this with a large document and use the
Print View when looking at the document in Word. You'll have less
of a problem in Normal View, or with a smaller document (under 50
pages).
Good luck!
Liz0259

Problems importing a Word doc into Robohelp HTML

I have a 116-page Word document with 13 chapters. When I
import this document into Robohelp HTML as a winhelp output file,
only two topics are created, rather than 13. On the Conversion
Options window, I select to have new topics created by Word style
"Heading 1" which are my chapter titles. Why doesn't Robohelp
create the topics, and what should I change to faciliate that?
Also, why don't my numbered lists from Word stay numbered in
Robohelp? Is there a way to automate numbered lists?

Thanks for your reply.
When I insert .gif files JDeveloper ends with a message saying "Process exited with exit code 0". I then go and check in the database and I find the image added to the table.
With a word doc, JDeveloper does not give that message. No message at all regarding what the status of the process is. And the document is not added to the database. No error messages too. Could this be an issue with Oracle?

Unable to copy material or import Word Doc into RoboHelp 9 (Suite 3)?

I had this problem for awhile until I discovered that I was trying to import material from older word documents. Just opening the word doc in Office 10, saving it as a docx file before trying to copy and paste cleared this up. Pictures and text come across easily in RoboHelp 9 and Photoshop now.
PDF files are hit and miss. I think it may be due to the same type of problem... earlier version creation on the part of the PDF. sometimes they import great, just like they look in PDF format, sometimes they don't are are a big mess. I have had to copy and paste sections, recreating the look of the original pdf in a RoboHelp page.
Backwards compatability seems to be an issue that keeps cropping up in this suite... or am I doing something wrong, missed a simple control somewhere?

I think you mean Office 2010. Office 10 is Office 2002,
I'm not quite clear whether you mean import in the sense of File > Import or copy and paste as you refer to both. File > Import from older versions has not given me any problems. Cut and paste is not something I do much of but again it hasn't given me problems.
Cut and paste doesn't require any instructions. Importing is covered on my site.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

RoboHelp freezing when importing large word docs

What are your experiences with RoboHelp for HTML Help when
importing large Word docs?
Mine seems to stop responding and has to be restarted. Also,
creating PDFs for large docs seems to be a problem.
While I am here, could someone please answer these questions:
1. Does RoboHelp support conditional inclusion/exclusion and
replacement of text? Where you can use a condition to display one
text OR another.
2. Does Robo support Modular Help?
3. What about automating output generation using batch files?
Is this possible?
4. Can PDF outputs be customized using templates?
it looks like Robo offers partial solutions to each of the
above questions but I will like to hear your experiences, as I am
on evaluation the tool with limited time.
TIA.

Hi zmajwa and welcome to the community
Please review the Posting Guidelines. You may do that by
clicking
here. Why? Because at this point, you have made exactly two
posts. You have asked the same question in two different places and
it is frowned upon here as it creates confusion and more work for
all involved.
The original thread can be viewed by
Clicking
here.
Thanks... Rick

Word Doc Format/Font Changes when Imported into RoboHelp

We currently have RH7. When we went from X5 to RH7 and imported our Word docs (Word 2003), the fonts and styles changed sometimes right after importing and other times after running the Glossary Wizard. It seems like RH7 doesn't want to read Word 2003 styles. Our temporary fix is to import our Word template (that we use for procedures) into each project. Once we import a Word document, we have to change the style sheet to the point to the Word template in order to fix the font and styles. We have to import the template whenever we import procedures or run the Glossary Wizard. Has anyone had this problem? We were able to import no problem with X5, but with version 7 we have to add these extra steps. We did find that when we created a new project in RH7 (not upgraded from Version 5), that we didn't have to import the template and assign the docs to it as the style sheet. Our projects are many and large in volume, so recreating in RH7 is not an option for us. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Isn't the problem here with importing rather than with the webhelp output? I wonder if this post would be better in the RoboHelp HTML forum.
Let me know if you would like it moved.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

Copy/paste text from Word doc or PDF to Robohelp

Bolded words, indentions, paragraphs, line spacing, font, and
text size amongst other things are lost when I do a simple
copy/paste... Any way to relieve this?
Thanks

Hi
I'd like to answer this in a slightly different way..
It's a good idea to format anything you paste into RH in RH
using paragraph styles etc. Hardcoded formatting won't be under
stylesheet control which is very bad news.
In fact I generally paste stuff from a word doc into notepad
first to remove any formatting soI have "clean" text to begin with.
That way you ensure consistency when styles are updated etc
as well maintaining consistency with what's already there.

Importing Word docs from a RH for Word project

I have a HUGE RH for Word project that I'm trying to convert
to RHTML (RH Office X5). We generate CHM with this project, and
we've got map ids for all topics. I've been to Peter Grainge's site
to get some ideas, but I don't think they're going to work. There
are so many Word files and topics (537 and 2,974, respectively)
that the more I think about it, the more I think that a conversion
to RH HTML might not be worth it.
When I tried to import all of the Word documents and also
convert the TOC (converting the Index isn't an option since it
never worked with our large number of Word docs) and use the
HTMLHelp.css (using the Import wizard), RH HTML crashed twice after
40 minutes.
So, I created a new RH HTML project and tried to import just
one Word doc from the RH for Word project, and selected the same
wizard options. As I expected, the Word doc imported, but even
though I told RH to split the topics on Heading 2, it also copied
in the characters (#S+@) that preceded every topic heading and
incorporated them into the Topic Title. AND, RH HTML did not
"convert" the TOC - it was blank.
In another post I saw a reference to this patch -
http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb07-10.html.
I'm not sure it's related, although when I examined my second
failed import attempt, the imported topics were visible in the
project folder only by using Windows Explorer - RoboHelp HTML did
not display them from within RoboHelp.
Does anyone know if this is the patch that will fix this
issue as well?
By the way, based on the number of questions I've seen posted
about RH for Word 7 with zero replies, I'm thinking I'm going to
run into issues as well, even if we leave it in RH for Word when we
upgrade to version 7. It seems that its size is an issue for RH
HTML.
Thanks,
Jim
Thanks,
Jim

Hi Jim,
just as an encouragement: we sucessfully converted a HUGE RH
for Word project (4,300 topics) to RH HTML a while ago, including
TOC, index and everything. I must admit though that we had all
those topics in only 25 word documents. Maybe you can reduce the
number of documents by moving the topics? There will always be
problems you run into and afterward, we had to go through every
single topic and check the formatting, but I guess you'd always
have to do this. But I think it's worth it, working in HTML is so
much more convenient.
Good luck!
Kathrin

Conditional build for chm and printed doc produce different outputs

I'm using RoboHelp HTML 9.0.2.271
In my TOC, I have two "books" of topics that I want to exclude from output because the topics won't be required at this time.
I right-clicked each book in the TOC and applied a condition ("Defer").
For the HTML Help (.chm), I made my build expression say NOT Defer and NOT Comment.
I generated the help.
The two books (and their topics) were excluded, as I expected.
For printed documentation (.doc), I made my build expression say NOT Defer and NOT Comment and NOT Online.
I generated the Word doc.
The two books were NOT excluded; they appeared in the printed doc.
The workaround is to delete them from the Chapter Layout window when I generate the printed doc, but I expected that since my build expression said to NOT include them, that they wouldn't be included.
Is my method wrong, or is it my expectation?

You're right (of course!). My .chm file does actually contain those topics.
So, applying a condition to a TOC entry and then excluding it in the build has this effect:
HTML Help file (.chm): Now the topic entry will not appear in the TOC. The topic itself still exists in the .chm file, though, and you can find it by searching.
Printed output (Word): There doesn't seem to be any effect. That topic entry still appears in the Word TOC and the topic itself still exists in the .doc (or .docx) file.
So, to exclude a topic, I have to place the condition on the topic itself, by either right-clicking the topic in Project Manager and applying the condition or by opening the topic and applying the condition. Then I have to exclude that condition in the build.
Do I have it right yet? :-)

Need help converting .chm file to .doc

Can anyone tell me how to convert a .chm file to MS Word .doc
file?

Yes and it is not by cross posting.
Please see my reply to your post in the RoboHelp HTML forum.
Please do not cross post. Why not? The reasons we ask are:
1] Most of the people who monitor these forums look at all
the posts in each category so we will see your question wherever
you post it.
2] When someone else searches for answers to the same
problem, they may go to the thread that was not answered and
wrongly conclude there is no solution to their problem. In fact the
answer may well be part of another thread. To avoid that, the
person responding may add a link from the second post to the thread
that has the answer. That is additional work that takes time. The
people supporting the forum are not paid employees of Adobe, they
are authors like yourself who have a job to do so having to create
two replies is a waste of their time.
3] You will also find that some people will answer you in one
thread while others will respond to the second post. The answers to
your post will thus be difficult for you and others to follow.
4] It is also against the forum rules which can be found at
http://www.adobe.com/support/forums/guidelines.html
If you are not sure how to use the forums, click the Help
button. There's also a very useful quide on RoboWizard's site at
http://tinyurl.com/yb7vsm

Importing Word docs from RH for Word X5 - out of memory error

I've tried a few times to import 537 Word docs (2,974) from a
RH for Word project (RH X5 for Word, CHM output) into a new RH HTML
5 project. Each time, RH HTML "hangs" and I've seen "out of memory"
at least once at the very end. The original RH for Word project has
conditional build tags defined, but only one tag has been assigned
to one topic, so far. We've never been able to build an index in
this RH for Word project (it's mostly blank), but we've built a
search and contents without problems.
Is an error related to Word? Is it a bug that was fixed for
version 6? Is it somehow related to this fix:
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb401651&sliceId=1?
If it's a known bug that was fixed with a later version, then
it would further help me build a case for converting to RH 7, with
the end result of converting the whole thing eventually to RH HTML.
Thanks,
Jim

I don't do much import but if you are trying to import 537
documents in one go, nothing would surprise me. Have you tried one
at a time or a small batch at a time?
The bug you point to arose in 6 and was fixed so it is not
relevant.
My guess is it is down to memory and that most PCs would
baulk at 537 documents in one go.

RoboHelp 8 for Word not installed with RoboHelp HTML?

My workplace just upgraded from RoboHelp Office 5x to RoboHelp 8. Come to find out, *all* that was installed was RoboHelp 8 HTML. The RoboHelp 8 for Word part of the application was not installed.
The department responsible for software installations says that they don't have the RoboHelp 8 Word program--that it didn't come with the RoboHelp download. They are insisting that it's not available, and will probably have to be purchased separately.
Has anyone else installed a volume license from a download?
If so, were the HTML and Word portions of the program both available?
Did both parts of the application install (HTML and Word)?
If one installer was used, was the the RoboHelp 8 for Word portion missing? (I.e., is this a bug?) Or did you get the whole thing?
If more than one installer was used, were the components downloaded in separate installation files? (Could someone have missed an installation file, in other words?)
FYI, please, I don't need all the advantages and reasons why I should use HTML Help or WebHelp instead. I work for a government agency, and need to just generate WinHelp to replace an existing Help file, not make everyone change a whole bunch of stuff to use WebHelp or a CHM file. I need WinHelp output from Word. And, one more thing: I do not have administrator access on my PC either.
Feedback, experiences, and suggestions welcome. Thanks in advance for your help!
Di

The licence you bought was for RoboHelp Office which includes both the RoboHelp for Word and RoboHelp HTML applications. Each of these three has it's own installation file so I suspect that they have installed just the RoboHelp HTML application. They should have the details for the RoboHelp for Word application, or better still the RoboHelp Office application which gives you the options of what to install according to your needs.
The RoboColum(n)
@robocolumn
Colum McAndrew

Stylesheets and applying to imported Word docs. (RHx5)

I've been reading a comments about style sheets, importing Word docs and formatting issues (in regards to importing Word docs and pre-determined styles/bullets/numbering). I also saw that someone was trying to create a css outside of RH and was having issues. This leads me to a couple of questions.
1. When importing Word docs, does RH create a separate css for each doc, or is there an option to not have this occur when performing the import process?
2. If I am understanding css', you should only have one per project, if you want all of html pages to appear identical, correct?
3. What do you do if you've made the mistake of having several different css' out there, making everything appear funky? Can you create a new project and import the documents without the css and apply a new css (created in the new project) to all of the html files? Will this assist in correcting a lot of the spacing, bullet and numbering problems?
4. Can I view the default css and edit it?
I think I have a big problem on my hands. I was trying to make things easier for SMEs who were designated to write procedures in Word by creating the pre-defined formats. After reading PG's pages, I sunk into my chair. I was having the problems he mentioned. I tried to edit some of the pages in the html editor and appear to have made them worse. I was trying to simplify the code a little (with what knowledge I currently have with html, which is minimal). I am fortunate that I only have about 200 documents that could be impacted. Any comments/suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Rob

1] When importing Word docs, does RH create a separate css for each doc, or is there an option to not have this occur when performing the import process?
That's the way it is, no option.
2. If I am understanding css', you should only have one per project, if you want all of html pages to appear identical, correct?
With the "if you want them identical" proviso, you would only have one CSS but you don't have to have them all identical. That is your call.
3. What do you do if you've made the mistake of having several different css' out there, making everything appear funky? Can you create a new project and import the documents without the css and apply a new css (created in the new project) to all of the html files? Will this assist in correcting a lot of the spacing, bullet and numbering problems?
It's not a mistake but if you want to get out of that situation, you need to do some cleaning up. The first step will be to create a CSS that contains all your existing style names, note I say names. Each of your CSS files will have a variety of styles but let's make it easy for this explanation. One has H1, H2, P and P.Note (a class) while another has One has H1, H2, P and P.Warning (a class). Now let's say you have just two topics, one has CSS_1 and one has CSS_2. The H1, H2 and P styles may be the same or different but assuming they are different, you now want them to be the same so what you want is a CSS with H1, H2, P, P.Note and P.Warning. You could then apply that to both topics and all the content would be displayed as defined in CSS_3. Obviously the real task is bigger but the principals are the same.
The way I would tackle it is to create a new CSS and copy in the styles from the biggest of your existing CSS files. Then I would look at the others and copy in any styles that are not already in. That gives you all the style names, albeit with the wrong appearance. Then you start working through the styles to get them right. It is not as bad as it sounds. I recommend using Top Style from http://www.bradsoft.com. There's a free version that only opens one CSS at a time but you can see what you are doing with it. The others can be open in Notepad.
4. Can I view the default css and edit it?
Yes.
I think I have a big problem on my hands. I was trying to make things easier for SMEs who were designated to write procedures in Word by creating the pre-defined formats. After reading PG's pages, I sunk into my chair. I was having the problems he mentioned. I tried to edit some of the pages in the html editor and appear to have made them worse. I was trying to simplify the code a little (with what knowledge I currently have with html, which is minimal). I am fortunate that I only have about 200 documents that could be impacted. Any comments/suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Next time you need input from the SMEs, output to one Word template from RH so that they all have the same appearance. Their job is provide content so the styles are irrelevant to them.
Yes you've got some work but it isn't too massive. Hope this helps.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

Numbering in topics created by importing a Word doc

I have created a project and imported a single Word file that
is 88 pg. in length and that uses Word's styles to create bulleted
and numbered paragraphs. In the HTML topics, the HTML code follows
the pattern below for all lists:
first bulleted item
<li class=p-Bullet1>second
bulleted item</li>
Of course this causes the text to appear without bullets (or
numbers) for the following three reasons:
- the <ol... tag is missing
- the first bulleted/numbered item is assigned a <p tag
rather than an <li tag
- the second tag - <p... - overrides the <li tag
Is there some way to prevent this from happening? (If I
import a smaller Word doc, the problem doesn't seem to happen as
often. )

Thank you, Peter. I had been to your site before, but didn't
read the detailed articles about importing Word docs, because I
thought they applied only to earlier versions of RoboHelp. Having
reviewed them, I feel A LOT BETTER and have a better understanding
of what's going on "under the covers." Also, I've now spent some
time reviewing & modifying the stylesheet & HTML directly
in the topics, so I'm better prepared to understand the HTML code
you include.
Nonetheless, the original problem I posted still mystefies
me. As you suggest, I'll have to so some experimenting to
understand what's causing the first bullet or numbered item to be
assigned a rather than an <li
class=classname>.
As I stated earlier, it may just be that this particular
document's checkered past will require that I use your (thank you!)
macro to remove the formatting of bulleted & numbered
paragraphs & reassign bullets & numbering.
This leaves one final question: For RoboHelp 7 specifically,
do you advise setting bullets & numbering using styles, or the
Word toolbar?
Thank you again to all who share your experience &
advice.
- Carol

RoboHelp chm to Word doc

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