Converting .doc source files to .docx - will this work?

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rkossik
Propeller Head
Posts: 10
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2017 12:12 pm

Converting .doc source files to .docx - will this work?

Post by rkossik »

I converted to D2H 3 (and subsequently 4) with a very large project and when I did, I discovered a major issue: When creating a Print Manual Target, none of my linked graphics (bmp screenshots) scaled. That is, in the Source documents they were scaled (say to 70%), but in the Target document they all showed up at 100%. After messing around, I discovered that even for a simple file, if the Source document was a .DOC, the scaling was lost. If the Source document was .DOCX, scaling was applied. By the way, this seems to be a bug starting sometime in D2H 3. I used to be able to use .DOC with no problem.

Of course, if you simply convert the Source files from .DOC to .DOCX, you lose all topic information used for my HTML Target (keywords, customized TOC, context IDs). I have a HUGE project, and simply could not afford to do this. On the other hand, I needed the graphics to scale for my Print Manual Target. So I came up with this solution. It appears to work, buts since it is a hack, I'm a bit nervous about it. Can anyone comment on whether this will cause problems? Here is what I did:

1) I converted all of the .doc files to .docx files
2) I opened the D2H project file using MS Access
3) I found a table in that file named Files.
4) In that table I simply changed the names of all of the source files (from .doc to .docx) and saved the D2H project file.
5) I then opened D2H and everything seemed to work fine (the docx source files were listed, and all of the topic information remained).

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

Re: Converting .doc source files to .docx - will this work?

Post by SKamprowski »

Hi,
I suggest to use D2H function Convert .doc to .docx (for details you may read
http://help.madcapsoftware.com/d2h4/Con ... 0to%20docx ).
Topic properties stored only in the project file (.d2h) will remain, and links that you may have created using document names are changed from extension .doc to .docx.

Kind regards,
Sabine Kamprowski
Kind regards,
Sabine Kamprowski
DocToHelp MVP (by ComponentOne)
rkossik
Propeller Head
Posts: 10
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2017 12:12 pm

Re: Converting .doc source files to .docx - will this work?

Post by rkossik »

I was not aware of that function! That would have saved me a bit of effort. However, it looks like my hack actually worked any...
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