Creating new projects

You can create many kinds of projects in RoboHELP. You can also import a variety of files and incorporate them into your projects. If you have WinHelp projects, you can easily move them into a HTML-based Help format, as well as import other HTML-based Help projects. Importing Microsoft Word documents and .HTM files is easy, too.

To create a new project:

  1. From the File menu, select New - Project.

  2. Click the New tab.

  3. Select the type of project you want to create. Each type uses a different template.

  1. In Enter the title of this Help project, type the title of the new project. This name identifies your project when it is displayed in the HTML Help viewer (for example, “Caribbean Getaways”).

  2. Type the name of the new project file. This is the file name you select whenever you open the project to work on it. The program assigns the .MPJ extension to this file to identify it as the project file (for example, enter “Caribbean” and the project is named Caribbean.mpj).

  3. Specify the location where you want to save (and store) the project and its files. You can save them on a network or on a local drive in any folder or subfolder (for example, C:\Caribbean).

    As a shortcut, you can click to navigate to the drive/folder you've selected as the project location.

  4. Type the title of the first topic in your HTML Help project. This can be the opening topic such as Welcome or Getting Started. The program creates an HTML topic based on the title you assign and adds the .HTM extension to it (for example, “Welcome to the Caribbean.htm”).

Note: “First Topic” is the default name of the first topic created unless you type a different name. If you are not sure what name you want to use, accept the default and rename it later.

  1. If you want to include WebSearch in your project, select Enable WebSearch.

  2. Click Finish.

The new project is created and the first topic opens in the WYSIWYG Editor. The text that is displayed in the topic provides a visual clue to get you started. At this point, you can attach a style sheet to the topic and design custom styles or you can add new topics.