Online Help
Technical Writing
RoboHelp Courses
Resource Center

Web Design
Graphics & Layout

Marketing Writing
Our Clientele
Company Profile
Free Software

General Inquiries
Paula R. Stern

Our Team

The following procedure was originally designed to quickly create a list of popups for a glossary in WinHelp or WinHelp 2000 using RoboHelp for Word. If you wish to use the same procedure to develop a glossary list for HTML-based help, it is recommended that you follow this procedure, generate the list, and then port it to the output of your choice. 

Note: Recent versions of HTML-based projects include a Glossary function. This method is primarily used in WinHelp, but can be used in HTML-based systems as well.

The finished product would look something like this:

When you click on the word WinHelp, for example, a popup window appears.

This is accomplished by creating an individual topic called Glossary, with a list of popup links. Much of this can be done automatically using RoboHelp functionality. The process is detailed in the following sections.

To create a glossary:

1. 1. Create a table in Word, as shown below:
   

2. Highlight the Terms column and change the style to Heading 5. You can use any style, but it should not be one that is typically used to create a standard topic (for example, headings 1, 2, and 3).

3. From the Table menu, select Convert > Table to text and separate by paragraphs. The result should be something that looks like this:
   

4. Select RoboHelp > Convert. The Conversion Options dialog box appears. Under Topic Conversion, select only Heading 5 (or whatever special style name you used to designate popups).
   
   

5. You have two options for how to proceed, depending on the number of definitions in your glossary:

   • Enable Prompt when Creating Topics: On the General tab, clear the Add to Index checkbox. Click the Advanced tab. Verify that there is no  Map # and Browse Sequence is set to No Browse Sequence. Click OK and continue with each of the topics.
     

   • Disable Prompt when Creating Topics. The topics will be created automatically. Manually delete the K and + footnotes, leaving only #, $ and @ (optional). See below:

From the RoboHelp menu, select AutoCreate Hotspot List

After you click okay, you will see something similar to the following:

Compile the project (modify the list if necessary, for example, delete the link to Glossary in the above sample).