Automatically creating tables of contents

To save time, you can automatically generate a table of contents so you don't have to create one manually.

The hierarchy of books and pages in the table of contents mirrors the hierarchy of folders, topics, and any subfolders in the Project Manager. The program creates books based on the custom folders and it creates pages based on the topics located in these custom folders. Any topics not saved in custom folders are displayed as pages at the first level in the TOC hierarchy. You can rearrange the order of books and pages after the table of contents is created.

These items are sorted alphabetically. You can create custom books and rearrange their order to suit your needs, and revise the table of contents with new books and pages whenever necessary.

To automatically create a table of contents:

  1. Click the TOC tab.

  2. From the Tools menu, select Auto Create TOC.

  3. If you have an existing table of contents that you no longer want to use, select Delete current TOC before creating new. All existing books and pages are removed and a new table of contents is generated in its place.

  4. If you have an existing table of contents that you want to keep, clear Delete current TOC before creating new. Your existing books and pages will be included with the new table of contents.

  5. If your topics use bookmarks and you want to create pages that link to them, select Include Bookmarks.

 

Tips:

  • Click Undo if you want to clear the table of contents that the program created. This action will restore your existing books and pages if you chose to delete them. (This command is only available if Auto Create TOC was the last command used in the program.)

  • To automatically synchronize books and pages with the topics displayed at the right side of the HTML Help viewer, the topic file names need to use underscores rather than spaces. The General tab at the Options dialog has a feature called Use underscore with file names. Select this option and the program will save topic file names with underscores between words (for example, My_Help_Topic.htm).

  • You can automatically replace spaces with underscores. From the Tools menu, select Convert spaces to underscores.