Mini-TOC and Link lists

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Navigation: Basic Working Procedures > Editing Topic Files

The Link List tool can automatically create a variety of different lists of hyperlinks to topics and insert them in your topic. These lists are dynamic. This means that they are not created when you insert them, but every time you publish your project. This means that the list is always up to date at the time of publishing.

The tool is located in the Insert Object section at the right end of the Write tab:

LinkListsIcon

How to use the Link List tool

Opening the tool displays this dialog:

Just select the list type (see further below for a reference) and configure your settings:

Dialog settings:

See further below in this topic for a description of the link list types.

Exclude this topic:	The current topic is not included in the link list.
Bullet list:	Displays the list as a bulleted list. Otherwise it will just be displayed as a series of paragraphs.
Inline:	Displays links in a single paragraph, separated by commas.
Changed date:	Includes the modification date of the referenced topics, in the selected format.
Topic description:	Adds the description of the current topic, if available. This is the optional text that you can enter in the Description: box in the Topic Options tab, to the left of the topic editor. Note that the description is not included if you choose the Inline link format.
Fallback text:	If a link list happens to be empty, because no links qualify for the specified criteria, this text is inserted instead.

The list is inserted as a placeholder!

Note that the list is not generated when you insert it. You will only see a placeholder in the topic editor. The actual list is generated when you publish your project so that the topics it contains are always up to date.

List types and list formatting

Available list types:

Siblings of this chapter:	Links to all the topics in the current chapter on the same level as the topic in which you are inserting the list. You will generally want to exclude the current topic from this list.
Sub-topics of this chapter:	Includes all the sub-TOC-entries of the current topic, if there are any.
Anchors within this topic:	Links to all anchors in the same topic and creates a Mini-TOC for navigation within the topic. The caption of the link will be all text from the corresponding anchor to the end of the anchor paragraph.
Topics modified within last:	All the topics that have been modified/edited within the last X days. You need to specify the number of days.
Topics modified between:	All topics modified/edited between two specified dates.

List formatting:

The formatting of the list is generated automatically and based on the formatting of the placeholder. The easiest way to achieve this is to apply a paragraph style to the placeholder. Then the list will be formatted with that style. Otherwise just select the placeholder and then format it with the Font and Paragraph dialogs in the Write tab.

Examples

(A) Link list with all siblings in this chapter, excluding self, no date:

Recently changed topics

Topic Options

Topic History - Previous Versions

Word and Character Count

Writing and formatting text

The paragraph end mark

Topic Headers

Selecting text and content

Copying, cutting and pasting

Searching and replacing

Spell checking

Special characters, lines and breaks

Using comments and bookmarks

Inserting QR codes

Printing topics

Editing XML source code

(B) Recently changed topics in the entire project, short date:

Google Analytics (11/16/2022)

Profiling WebHelp with Google Analytics (11/16/2022)

Configuring a Merge Tool (11/11/2022)

Using SVN in Help+Manual (11/11/2022)

Using Git in Help+Manual (11/10/2022)

Configuring a Merge Tool (11/10/2022)

PDF and Printed Manuals (11/7/2022)

Caption (11/7/2022)

Link Tool (11/7/2022)

Embedded PDF Files (11/7/2022)

Inserting topic links (11/7/2022)

Inserting tables (11/7/2022)

Machine translation with DeepL (11/7/2022)

User Interface (11/7/2022)

Inserting graphics and screenshots (11/7/2022)

Anchors - jump targets (11/7/2022)

Syncing Your Project (11/5/2022)

Configuration in Help+Manual (11/5/2022)

Scripts and Customization (11/5/2022)

GitHub & GitHub Desktop (11/5/2022)

Other Hosting Options (11/5/2022)

Supported Version Control Systems (11/5/2022)

Setting up your Projects (11/5/2022)

Git Components (11/4/2022)

Using Git (11/4/2022)

Setting up SVN (11/3/2022)

Introduction (11/3/2022)

SVN Components (11/3/2022)

Using Subversion (SVN) (11/3/2022)

•Table Counters, Captions and CSS (Sunday, January 5, 2020)

•Adobe PDF and printed manuals (Saturday, January 4, 2020)

•Special Characters (Friday, January 3, 2020)

•Featured images for title pages (Thursday, December 19, 2019)

•CHM in Asian Languages (Thursday, December 19, 2019)

•The User Interface (Thursday, December 12, 2019)

•Microsoft HTML Help (Thursday, November 28, 2019)

•Managing modules in the TOC (Thursday, November 28, 2019)

•Step 4: Synchronize the new version (Thursday, November 28, 2019)

•Link lists and See Also links (Wednesday, November 27, 2019)

•The Formula Editor (Thursday, November 7, 2019)

•Screen Capture (Thursday, November 7, 2019)

•Microsoft help compilers (Thursday, November 7, 2019)

•Selecting and formatting cells and tables (Thursday, October 31, 2019)

•Translation-friendly Tidy XML (Thursday, October 31, 2019)

(D) Topics changed in entire project between January 1 and October 31, 2019, bullet list, long date:

•Translation-friendly Tidy XML (Thursday, October 31, 2019)

•Selecting and formatting cells and tables (Thursday, October 31, 2019)

•Reference (Tuesday, October 22, 2019)

•Importing data (Tuesday, May 14, 2019)

•Links to help from your application (Tuesday, May 14, 2019)

•Creating context-sensitive topics (Tuesday, May 14, 2019)

•Getting help (Tuesday, May 14, 2019)

•Editing topics (Tuesday, May 14, 2019)

•Converting text to tables (Tuesday, March 19, 2019)

•About tables (Tuesday, March 19, 2019)

•Editing and formatting links (Thursday, March 7, 2019)

•Styling imported formatted text (Wednesday, February 13, 2019)

(E) Link list with all siblings in this chapter, excluding self, as numbered list:

1.Recently changed topics

2.Topic Options

3.Topic History - Previous Versions

4.Word and Character Count

5.Writing and formatting text

6.The paragraph end mark

7.Topic Headers

8.Selecting text and content

9.Copying, cutting and pasting

10.Searching and replacing

11.Spell checking

12.Special characters, lines and breaks

13.Using comments and bookmarks

14.Inserting QR codes

15.Printing topics

16.Editing XML source code

(F) Link list with all siblings in this chapter, as bullet list/tree, embedded in another bullet list:

•This is the static first entry of the list

oHere are some recently changed topics:

▪Recently changed topics

▪Topic Options

▪Topic History - Previous Versions

▪Word and Character Count

▪Writing and formatting text

▪The paragraph end mark

▪Topic Headers

▪Selecting text and content

▪Copying, cutting and pasting

▪Searching and replacing

▪Spell checking

▪Special characters, lines and breaks

▪Using comments and bookmarks

▪Mini-TOC and Link lists

▪Inserting QR codes

▪Printing topics

▪Editing XML source code

•The static list continues here

For experts: HTML formatting

Formatting with your own CSS in HTML output

When you publish to HTML-based formats topic links in link lists have an additional CSS class hmlinklistitem. This is added to the standard topiclink class, so that topic links in link lists have the class attribute class="topiclink hmlinklistitem". You can use this to format topic links in link lists differently from other topic links.

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