MadCap Software Forums

I'm very new to Doc-to-Help, having inherited the documentation task from a previous employee. No training has yet been offered, so I'm trying to figure this out on my own.

I'm trying to duplicate an old XML project using Word source files. I've converted all the XML files to Word. When I import them into the new Project, they're all at the same level. I need to organize them into "topics", "sub-topics", etc., so they will show that way in the built help project.

I have no idea how to do this. Can anyone offer any help to me? I'd appreciate it.

Thanks.

Welcome to the forums!

Big caveat coming: I am not an active Doc-To-Help user. My tool of choice is Flare. But that won't keep me from trying to help you.

Suspecting that the mechanism for organizing Help output in Doc-To-Help is not all that different from doing the same in Flare, I went looking in the Doc-To-Help online help for "TOC" (table of contents) and hit upon this relevant topic: http://help.madcapsoftware.com/d2h4/Con ... ntents.htm

Perhaps this is enough to get you pointed in the right direction until a more Doc-To-Help-knowledgeable person than I adds to the discussion.

Thank you! I'll review the TOC topic.

Hi,

What you could do is copy all the separate xml topics (I guess Heading 1 style) into 1 Word document. Within this document structure all the topics by assigning the appropriate Heading styles: 1, 2, 3 etc.This will create the different levels in the TOC.

Sjouke

Hi richpit,

actually, I've asked myself, how you converted your xml files into Word. I suggest to use your old project which I assume is a D2H project created with an older version. If that is true, you may create a manual from this (upgraded) project, even with current D2H. That should give you a Word document wich uses the styles you need in a new project, in which you import that Word document. Otherwise, take a look into you D2H project styles (in the Project ribbon). Here you may enter names of all styles you want to be used for creating a TOC.

Kind regards,
Sabine Kamprowski

Chainware wrote:Hi,

What you could do is copy all the separate xml topics (I guess Heading 1 style) into 1 Word document. Within this document structure all the topics by assigning the appropriate Heading styles: 1, 2, 3 etc.This will create the different levels in the TOC.

Sjouke

SKamprowski wrote:Hi richpit,

actually, I've asked myself, how you converted your xml files into Word. I suggest to use your old project which I assume is a D2H project created with an older version. If that is true, you may create a manual from this (upgraded) project, even with current D2H. That should give you a Word document wich uses the styles you need in a new project, in which you import that Word document. Otherwise, take a look into you D2H project styles (in the Project ribbon). Here you may enter names of all styles you want to be used for creating a TOC.

Kind regards,
Sabine Kamprowski

Thanks to you both for the ideas! I'm going to consider both of them.

SKamprowski, I converted my xml files by opening them in Word and saving as docx. You are correct about the old project.

Thanks,
Richard

Hi Richard,

today I tried to open some xml files created as source files by older projects with Word. My test files were rather radomly. I wanted to see how they are formatted, since styles are what D2H analyzes in a source document to break a document down into chapters and create a table of contents. YET, all the samples I tried could not be opened in Word (2010).
Do you have any newer Word version that DOES open all you documents?

Kind regards,
Sabine Kamprowski

SKamprowski wrote:Hi Richard,

today I tried to open some xml files created as source files by older projects with Word. My test files were rather radomly. I wanted to see how they are formatted, since styles are what D2H analyzes in a source document to break a document down into chapters and create a table of contents. YET, all the samples I tried could not be opened in Word (2010).
Do you have any newer Word version that DOES open all you documents?

Kind regards,
Sabine Kamprowski

No, I had to edit each xml file and remove the first 2 lines to get Word to open them.

Richard