The importer needs to know how to deal with the different parts of HTML topic pages. You can improve the import performance with the import options settings.

Converting imported HTML formatting to styles

Provided style classes were used in the original HTML you can globally strip out inline formatting imported from HTML and convert it to style references with the powerful Toolbox utility included in the Premium Pack style pack.

Topic header:
Getting the header information from the <title> tag will usually work. If your topics have a separate header block you may need to specify a different tag. If in doubt display the CHM file, right-click on one of its pages and examine the source code with View Source.

Topic body:
Specify a <table> or <div> tag with a specific ID only if you know that is used to identify your body content. Otherwise use the default setting.

Ignore internal folders:
Help+Manual does not use internal folders in CHM files, all files are stored on the same level. If the CHM file contains internal folders the folder names will normally be prefixed to the topic IDs of the imported topics to prevent name conflicts. You can turn this option off if you are sure that there are no name conflicts caused by files with the same names stored in different folders.

Single-column tables:
Some topic pages are enclosed in single-cell/single-column tables, which can cause undesirable results when you import them. You can solve this problem with the option for converting such tables to single paragraphs.

Import tags and labeled elements as anchors:
If you you know the HTML files you are importing contain tags and labeled elements with name= attributes that you want to use as anchors you can make sure that they are converted to anchors (jump targets) with this setting.

Import invisible block elements (and make them visible):
Normally block elements hidden with the display=none attribute are considered to be not part of a page. This setting enables you to import these elements and switches them to visible. (Invisible block elements are not directly supported in Help+Manual).

Ignore HTML styles and use default styles (except margins, bold, italic, underline):
Use this option if you want to import your CHM or HTML files with a "clean slate" for styles and formatting. It will strip out all styles (both CSS and inline styles) and only keep margins, bold, italics and underline. This can be particularly useful for source material that has accumulated a lot of manual formatting over time.

Overwrite existing topics:
This is only displayed when you are importing into an existing Help+Manual project. If you select it, it will overwrite any existing topics in your project with imported topics that have the same IDs. Use with caution!

Popup topics file:
In CHM help popup topics are stored in a special plain-text file inside the CHM. Normally this has a standard name (CSHelp.txt) but if you know that the file you are importing uses a different name you can select or enter it here.

Help+Manual automatically imports and integrates the styles from Word RTF files, but formatted text from HTML must be imported as "manual formatting". This is necessary because HTML formatting cannot be automatically converted cleanly into "text" and "paragraph" styles. Normally, if you want to use styles on imported formatted text you must first create Help+Manual styles on the basis of the imported formatting and then apply the styles to your text.

Converting imported HTML formatting to styles globally with Premium Pack Toolbox

Provided style classes were used in the original HTML you can globally strip out inline formatting imported from HTML and convert it to style references with the powerful Toolbox utility included in the Premium Pack add-on for Help+Manual. If you have or are considering buying the Premium Pack, see Integrating imported formatting globally for details on this.

Otherwise see the Replacing Formatting and Styles chapter for instructions.

There are no special settings for importing Markdown files, as the Markdown format is by definition extremely simple. The Markdown flavor (Daring Fireball or Common Mark) is selected automatically on the basis of the content of the file.

A set of standard styles is used to represent the basic Markdown formats.

There are no special settings for importing Winhelp files.

You will get much better results if you import Winhelp project source files (.hpj project file and other accompanying files). Compiled .hlp files do not contain all the information needed for recreating Winhelp projects.

Help+Manual does not import Adobe FrameMaker projects directly. However, you can achieve very good results by using FrameMaker's Save as RTF function. This provides all the benefits of importing Word files, including integrating your styles in the Help+Manual project stylesheet. In addition to this, FrameMaker also does a great job of exporting its compound graphics to vector-based EMF files, which Help+Manual can handle very well.

So to import a project from FrameMaker, just save it as RTF in FrameMaker, then follow the instructions for importing Word RTF files below.

There are no special settings in the import wizard for importing RTF files. However, you do need to plan the content of your RTF files in order to get the best results.

Save your Word files in the RTF format with Word before importing

If you have RTF files that were not created with Word, always re-save them to RTF with Word before importing them to Help+Manual.

Automatic topic generation

The importer splits the contents of RTF files into topics automatically if possible, using one of two methods:

Standard Word Heading1 - Heading 9 styles:
If your RTF file uses the standard Word Heading 1 ... Heading 9 styles each heading with one of these styles will start a new topic. Subtopics will be created automatically on the basis of the heading levels.

Hard page breaks:
If your file does not use Heading 1 .. Heading 9 styles new topics are created at hard page breaks. No subtopics are created with this method.

Limiting the depth of chapter creation

You can limit the depth of chapter creation when importing Word documents with excessively complex chapter structures. You do this by specifying the maximum levels that should be converted to chapters and sub-topics in your Help+Manual project. For example, if you specify you only want the first 3 levels as chapters, all sub-topics below level 3 will be included in body of the corresponding topic.

These lower-level topics will not be included in the TOC and their headings will be rendered as normal text sub-headings in the body of the topic, along with their text.

Styles in RTF files

Styles used in RTF files are imported to your Help+Manual project. They remain attached to the text they were applied to in the RTF document and they are also added to your project styles list. If the RTF you are importing to an existing project contains styles that conflict with existing styles in the project a dialog will be displayed asking you whether you want to keep the old styles, the new styles or add a second version of the style with a different name.

You can start using your styles immediately after importing and you can also edit them in Write > Edit Styles.

Map styles to imported styles:
This option merges styles from the imported document with styles with the same name in your Help+Manual project.

Anchors in RTF files

If the Word file contains links to anchors in topics, you may want to import the anchors as well. However, this can also create a lot of spurious anchors as well because Word files tend to use a lot of anchors for other purposes and Help+Manual cannot distinguish them from anchors used as link targets.

Hyperlinks in RTF files

Most hyperlinks in RTF files will be converted correctly but in some cases it may not be possible to resolve their targets with 100% certainty. In these cases the links will be shown highlighted in red in the Help+Manual editor so that you can check them and make the necessary correctly.

Graphics in RTF files

Graphics embedded in RTF files do not have names, they only have sequential numbers, starting with 1 in every RTF file. Help+Manual automatically generates sequential names for the graphics files combined with the first 8 letters of the RTF name, or of the project name if it is a WinHelp HPJ project. This ensures that you don't get duplicate file names for different graphics when you import RTF files to different projects.

About AuthorIT importing:

Help+Manual does a very thorough conversion and import of your AuthorIT project. All the following items are imported:

•All topics and snippets

•All "Books" (converted into H+M  TOCs)

•Index keywords automatically created by AIT

•Text and paragraph styles (AIT Help styles)

•Hyperlinks to topics and web pages

•Tables

•Variables (3 predefined variables and all user-defined variables)

•Topic status (converted to H+M topic status)

•Build tags (AIT Help, Web and Print tags converted to H+M build tags)

•Graphics with original file names

•Embedded pictures

•"See Also" link lists in topics

First publish your AuthorIT project to XML with the Publish To option:

To import an AuthorIT project you first need to publish it to XML using the Publish To option. This step is essential. You won't be able to import an Author IT source project directly.

Options you must set in AuthorIT:

These two options must be set as follows in your AuthorIT configuration when you publish to XML for importing to Help+Manual:

•Export embedded pictures as files:YES

•Export linked pictures as files:YES

The following option can be activated, but is not required:

•Include preview of file objects:optional

AuthorIT import options in Help+Manual:

You can then import the XML project created by AuthorIT to Help+Manual. You will be shown these options:

•Create topic IDs from titles
Recommended! Activate this to make "human-readable" IDs based on the topic titles in your AuthorIT project. Turning this off generates "human-unfriendly" IDs based on the AuthorIT numeric topic IDs. This makes selecting the correct topics for link targets etc. much more difficult if you are a human and not a machine.

•Import snippets as separate topics
By default, your AuthorIT snippets are imported as topic files with the build option "none" so that they are only used as source for snippets and not automatically exported as hidden topics when you publish to formats that support this (CHM, WebHelp, eWriter, VS Help). Activating this option sets their build option to "all builds" instead, so that they have the same status as any other topic without a TOC entry.

•Add a list of related topics
If you activate this option your "Related Topics" lists for each topic are imported along with each topic. Turn it off to exclude these lists.

You can import RoboHelp X5, X6, 7, 8 and 9 projects.

Here too, the importer needs to know how to deal with the different parts of the HTML topic pages. You can improve the import performance with the import options settings.

Topic header:
Getting the header information from the <title> tag will usually work. If your topics have a separate header block you may need to specify a different tag. If in doubt check the HTML source code of the files in your RoboHelp project.

Single-column tables:
Some topic pages are enclosed in single-cell/single-column tables, which can cause undesirable results when you import them. You can solve these problems with the option for converting such tables to single paragraphs.

Graphics files:
The graphics files from the RoboHelp project are not imported to the new project directory. Instead, Help+Manual adds the current location(s) of the graphics files to the image folders list in the Configuration > Common Properties section of your project. You can move the image files after importing if you want – just change the folder entries in the Image Folders list accordingly after doing so and Help+Manual will then be able to find them.

With the exception of RTF files (see above), text imported from external sources is all tagged as "manually formatted" with inline formatting, not with styles. You can integrate this formatting into your Help+Manual stylesheet with the Create Style from Selection and Replace Styles functions.

Provided style classes were used in the original HTML you can globally strip out inline formatting imported from HTML and convert it to style references with the powerful Toolbox utility included in the Premium Pack style pack.

For instructions see Replacing Formatting and Styles.