MadCap Software Forums

I imported a Word doc into a project with a Side Navigation skin, creating new topics for every H1, H2, and H3. Sometimes an H1 is immediately followed by an H2 (I'm OK with that). But importing into the Side Nav skin it's not ok: you either get an empty page containing just the header, or you get H1 and H2 on the same page, with confusing results in the left nav because clicking either link opens the same page.

For my first project, I wrote a minor paragraph so the H1 wouldn't be on an empty page. But bla-bla text goes against my grain. This time, I tried de-linking the H1 page's TOC entry from its topic and deleting the topic file. That seemed to work well for HTML output: I got a left-nav entry, and if you click it, it opens to show the sub-pages. Groovy!

Then I generated the PDF—and those "uncoupled" headers are missing.

Is there a solid fix to make the H1s appear in the PDF? My attempted fix (creating a new "H1-only" topic and slipping it into the TOC with a print-only condition) works fine until you try to link to it; the link works in PDF but breaks in HTML.

In a perfect world, I'd just remember not to link to these empty H1s. But my memory is full of holes, and I may not be the only one who ever works on this project. Does anyone have a better idea?

There's a setting in the PDF target that might help. In the Advanced tab, there's an option to Inject headings for unlinked books in TOC. Presumably if you have an unlinked book in the TOC, Flare will automatically generate a heading of the appropriate level in the PDF?

Thanks! I have some files that I don't want in the TOC, so I can't use that.

What do you mean by that? I'm suggesting that you delete the heading-only topics and leave them as unlinked books, then allow Flare to generate headings based on those book titles. If there's anything you don't want in either print or online outputs you should be able to condition it out.

Yes, thank you! I mis-processed your advice the first time and thought it would suck in files that weren't in the TOC at all.

This worked!

That's great to hear! I should have been more clear in my first attempt