How to Import RoboHelp Online Help Files

This forum is for all Flare issues related to getting started and installing the application.
Post Reply
Laura D
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu May 25, 2017 9:11 am

How to Import RoboHelp Online Help Files

Post by Laura D »

Where can I find detailed instructions for importing RoboHelp projects into Flare and then making the necessary adaptations to the files and structures to create a finished Flare project? The only guidance specific to RoboHelp conversion that I found was an 11-step process in Chapter 8 of the 2017 Flare Import Guide document.

What I'm trying to import into Flare are 18 online help systems for software applications. All help systems need to be context-sensitive (like they currently are in RoboHelp--to the page level, at least).

Thanks for any direction you can provide!

--Laura
SKamprowski
Sr. Propeller Head
Posts: 277
Joined: Fri Feb 13, 2015 8:25 am
Location: Germany

Re: How to Import RoboHelp Online Help Files

Post by SKamprowski »

Hi Laura,

perhaps some expert may be able to help, if you tell us, whether you 've followed the steps named by MadCap and at which step you need help.
Kind regards,
Sabine Kamprowski
DocToHelp MVP (by ComponentOne)
CindyBrockGA
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Jan 24, 2014 12:22 pm

Re: How to Import RoboHelp Online Help Files

Post by CindyBrockGA »

I am looking for the same type of information. In fact, I just created another topic because I had not yet seen this one. I'm using Robohelp 7 (UGH).

~CIndy ;}
Psider
Propellus Maximus
Posts: 811
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2011 1:32 am

Re: How to Import RoboHelp Online Help Files

Post by Psider »

A couple of things to look out for (and what applies will depend on your specific projects and robohelp and flare versions, so very general guidance only). Also, I did this a number of years ago, so can't remember all the details any more.


* Take backups and do a lot of prep and testing on copies of your backups.
* For a merged setup, you will need to dev and test on your parent project and at least one, possibly 2, child projects.
* For a merged setup, you will need to fix all your links between projects - this will likely include alias files, toc, index, glossary, (snippets? variables?) etc. I recommend writing and saving regex expressions in TextCrawler, which has a nifty preview window that lets you "live" test your scripts on a snippet of html code. You can also save your regex scripts for future use - particularly useful when you have a lot of projects to convert.
If you have friendly developers, they may be able to write scripts for you. This is highly recommended if you don't know regex at all - regex isn't hard, it just might be one to many things to track during a conversion project, plus you'll get more efficient scripts from someone who knows what they're doing.
* Again for a merged setup, you may want to consider using the option that removes the "Content" folder. This just makes some scripts simpler (figuring out how to change the links).
* You may need to tidy up RH specific code - e.g. kadov codes will probably be a problem for RH7.
* You may want to tidy up all the p tags RH sticks in lists (esp. earlier RH versions). Again, I recommend TextCrawler and regex to do this in bulk. There may be other RH tag quirks, but you'll need to check what your output looks likes to determine what you do or don't need to change.
* Any skin branding will need to be re-done in Flare.


I'm sure there's more, but that's just what I can remember now. The largest problems in my memory revolve around the merge setup, so it *should* be simpler if you are dealing with standalone projects.

As I said before, test extensively on backups of your projects.

Oh, and for unknown reasons, some projects took 3 or 4 attempts to import at all (some worked fine first go), so it helps to be stubborn. :)
Post Reply