Basic Working Procedures > Creating and Editing Topics

In this topic:

You can export and import topics with the Topics > Load/Save Topic functions. Four different export and import formats are supported: Word RTF, the Help & Manual XML Language format and two versions of the Help & Manual editor's own internal format called .HMTOPIC and .RVF.

Both .RVF and .HMTOPIC save all your topic content, including all formatting, tables, references to graphics, links and so on. The only difference between the two is that the .HMTOPIC format saves and loads the topic content and the topic header, whilst the .RVF format only saves and loads the topic content. The XML format also includes the entire topic with the header and all other information, just like .HMTOPIC.

The .HMTOPIC format is also used for topic content templates.

How to export a topic to the .RVF, .XML or .HMTOPIC formats:

Note that you cannot export multiple topics using this method.

1.	Select the topic you want to export in the Table of Contents (TOC).

2.	Select Topics > Save Topic to File.

3.	Choose the .HMTOPIC (full topic with header), .RVF (full topic without header) or .XML (full topic in XML format) output format In the Save as type: field.

4.	Select the directory where you want to save your topic and save.

IMPORTANT: Help & Manual can only process its own XML files!

Help & Manual can only process XML files created with Help & Manual. Currently you cannot export or import any other XML formats. Help & Manual uses its own XML schema known as the Help & Manual XML Language. This schema is designed specifically for exporting Help & Manual projects for external processing and then re-importing them, and it is the only XML schema with which this is possible.

The Help & Manual XML Language is fully documented in a separate help file included with the program (Helpman_XML_ref.chm in the Help & Manual program directory). The schema is fully open and you are welcome to develop your own applications for converting between the Help & Manual XML Language and other XML variants.

How to export a topic to the Word RTF format:

To do this you must compile your project using the "selected topics" option. Unlike Save Topic to File you can also export multiple topics at the same time with this function. However, remember that RTF does not support all of Help & Manual's formatting features. If you want to re-import your topics later it is better to use the .RVF or .HMTOPIC formats.

1.	Select the topic or topics you want to export in the TOC.

2.	Select or File > Make Help File & Run and select the MS Word output option.

3.	Select Selected Topics in the section under the Include Options: heading.

4.	Use the button in the Output path and file name: field to select the location and file name for the export.

5.	Click on to export the topic(s).

How to import a topic from an external file:

This method is for importing individual topics. For instructions on how to import multiple topics from a Word RTF file see Importing an RTF file. Note that you cannot import multiple .RVF or .HMTOPIC files.

1.	Create a new, empty topic in the position in the TOC where you want to import the topic. Click inside the editor window in the new topic.

Importing a topic into an existing topic overwrites the entire contents of the existing topic!

2.	Select Topics > Load Topic from File and select the topic file you want to load. You can load .RVF, .HMTOPIC and .XML files and .RTF files created with Help & Manual or MS Word. (RTF files created by programs other than MS Word may contain incompatible features.)

You can only import XML files created with Help & Manual 4, using the Help & Manual XML Language schema. Other XML formats or schemas are not supported.

3.	Select the topic file you want to load.

4.	See Content templates for topics for more details on loading topics from files.