Embedding Images

[Sam Boling]

Hello. I'm new to this software. I was wondering if there was a way to embed images instead of storing them all in a folder. Thank you.

[Tim Green]

Hi Sam,

Welcome to the forum!

I was wondering if there was a way to embed images instead of storing them all in a folder.

This happens automatically if you copy text and images together from another program like Word. However, it is a very bad thing to do and we urgently recommend that you don't do it! Embedded images can be a serious cause of slow editing performance. A couple of embedded images are OK, but you need to know that they take up a huge amount of memory and computer resources (many times their own uncompressed size) and having more than a few of them can slow down editing and will also unnecessarily bloat your project files. Help & Manual 6 automatically prompts the user to convert embedded images to external files on insertion and you should always do this right away.

Having images in folders is much more efficient. Also, if you are worrying that this will make your projects less portable, you don't need to: Help & Manual only stores the image file name in the reference in your topics. The image is found by searching the folders listed in Configuration > Common Properties > Project Search Path. You can move your images around whenever and wherever you like -- you just need to change the path settings so that HM knows where to look for them. In addition to this, the paths are stored as relative paths, so if you put your image folders inside your project folder (or the project folder and image folders inside a common parent folder) you can move the entire folder around without having to change the paths at all.

See this topic in the help for details:

http://helpandmanual.com/help/index.htm ... naging.htm

[Sam Boling]

Thank you Tim. For some reason, the project defaulted the images to my documents. The problem was that I'm not the only person that logs into the server to make the changes. After playing around with it, I found that after I moved the images into a folder within the directory of the software, I pointed to one image and it asked if I wanted to point the project to that folder. Once I did that, all my images were visible. Thanks again.

[Tim Green]

After playing around with it, I found that after I moved the images into a folder within the directory of the software, I pointed to one image and it asked if I wanted to point the project to that folder. Once I did that, all my images were visible. Thanks again.

Yes, because when you do that it adds the reference to the Project Search Path. You can do that manually yourself as well: In the Project Explorer on the left, go down to Configuration > Common Properties > Project Search Path. There you can add folders with the Add button and remove redundant ones where you don't want HM to look for images any more.

Removing redundant folders is important as searching through folders unnecessarily can slow things down, particularly if they are on network drives. You can also change the order of the folders in the list. This can be helpful because HM searches the folders from top to bottom and inserts the FIRST image with a matching name that it finds.