Page breaks in Word/pdf

[Ga Bowen]

I normally output to pdf and html and now require an additional Word output.

The Word output puts all page breaks after the Heading.

Can I fix this?

[Tim Green]

Hi Gareth,

This isn't a known issue and I can't reproduce it. Where and how are you inserting your page breaks?

[Ga Bowen]

It appears only to be a problem in rtf output. I'll use docx instead.

Also, while you're here...

1 Can you not put variables in Headers? They seem to be working in the Footer for me.
2 I get the warning Word found unreadable content in [document title]. Do you want to recover the contents of this document? If you trust the source of this document, click Yes. It then gives me the screen, as follows:



Is this a Word issue, or is there something I can do at the H+M end?

Thanks!

[Tim Green]

Hi Gareth,

You can use HM variables in Word templates but you must insert them in Word fields. They don't work on their own. They need to be comment or document properties fields:

https://www.helpandmanual.com/help/hm_w ... ields.html

It appears only to be a problem in rtf output. I'll use docx instead.

Thanks, now I can reproduce it. Will be fixed asap.

[Ga Bowen]

That's great, cheers Tim.

I still can't get the variables to work in the header, and I still get the same warning, though.

[Tim Green]

I still can't get the variables to work in the header, and I still get the same warning, though.

It would help if you could specify which header, where and how you are inserting the variables.

[Ga Bowen]

I still can't get the variables to work in the header, and I still get the same warning, though.

It would help if you could specify which header, where and how you are inserting the variables.

I was referring to the main header area, as shown:

[Tim Green]

Hi Gareth,

You can't use those variables in the header, they are for the TOC only. Also, even if they were usable in headers they would still be invalid on the TOC page because there is no corresponding topic there that could reference the page header like that, even if the mechanism for that were to be there. In the TOC itself it is different, HM resolves those variables on publishing. In the Word header the variables need to be dynamic, so that Word itself can update them, and it can't do that with HM variables, which can only be resolved during the publish/export process.

We would suggest trying the following (this is just a suggestion for an experiment):

1) Export a Word file from your project complete with TOC, header etc.
2) Open the resulting exported file in Word and edit the header
3) Use Word fields to insert the dynamic entries you want to have in the header
4) Test it out, then copy the edited header back into your Word template for HM

This could work provided Help+Manual doesn't mistakenly identify your header fields as something that it needs to resolve during publishing. If it does, please send the edited template to me at support AT ec-software.com (replace the AT with @) and we'll have a look at the situation.

CRITICAL: The edited header must only be included on the template page where Help+Manual inserts the topics, not on pages like the Cover or the Index.

[Ga Bowen]

That all makes sense and works perfectly. Superb stuff.

Thanks AGAIN, Tim.

[Tim Green]

Hi Gareth,

Thanks very much for the confirmation!