How to Create a RoboHelp Project — A Beginner’s Tutorial

robohelp project

A. Introduction

This Adobe RoboHelp HTML 10 tutorial shows the basic steps required to create a RoboHelp project. (Robohelp comes in two flavors: Robohelp for Word, and Robohelp HTML). In this tutorial, we will use RoboHelp 8 HTML and generate a  help file, starting from a “Blank Project”.

NOTE: Robohelp is a deep program with too many functions and capabilities to count here. This Quick Start Tutorial barely covers 10% of everything you can do with RoboHelp.

The general steps are:

B. Opening the Application and Creating a new Project

1. Select RoboHelp 10 from the Start menu or click the desktop icon to launch the application.
RoboHelp 10 HTML Starter screen appears:

How to Create a RoboHelp 10 Project - A Basic Tutorial

2. Click the “(Create New) Blank Projectoption to display the New Project Wizard dialog box:

How to Create a RoboHelp10 Project - Basic Tutorial 2

3. Enter a TITLE for the help project and a NAME for the project file.  Note: In RoboHelp, each new Help file is created in the form of a project. The same project can be used to generate Help files in different formats.

4. Browse and find the location (path) where the project file will be stored.

5. Select a language from the Language drop-down menu. English is the default.

6. Click Finish to display the Robohelp’s Integrated  Explorer Screen, displaying the First Topic created by default:

How to Create a RoboHelp10 Project - Basic Tutorial 3
Note that the panes are dynamically displayed, depending on the options you select from the VIEW menu. For example, in the lower-left corner of your screen, you can display both the Single-Source Layouts list and the Conditional Build Tags, depending on what you need.  Similarly, in the lower-right corner, you can display both the Topics List and the Output View when you generate the final output file.

RH’s default workspace has 4 panes, integrated within a single frame:  Project Set-Up Pane, Conditional Text (or Single-Sourcing Layout) pane, Topic Edit pane, and the Output View (or Topic List) pane at the bottom.
NOTE: Conditional Text is an important single-sourcing functionality that you cannot find in Robohelp for Word.

C. Create Content for The Default Help Topic

1. Start typing your content for the default First Topic in the upper-right pane, just like you would when you are creating a normal text document. Use the formatting buttons in the tool bar to edit your text anyway you like.

2. To insert images, select Insert > Images from the menu bar, or click the Insert Image button on the tool bar.

D. Create a New Help Topic

1. Select File  > New > Topic from the menu bar or click the Create a New Topic button (question mark on a blank page) in the Project Manager pane to display the New Topic dialog box:

How to Create a RoboHelp10 Project - Create New Topic - Basic Tutorial 4
2. Enter a Topic Title, File Name, Master Page (if you’re applying a page template), select a Language from the drop-down list, enter Keywords for SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

3. Select the Exclude From Search check-box if you do NOT want this topic to show up in any searches.

4. Click OK to have the new topic displayed in the Topic List pane at the bottom.

5. Double click any topic in the Topic List to display it in the Topic Edit pane. Start editing the way you’d normally edit any text.

Continue creating and populating new topics by following the same steps above. All topics will be listed in Topic List pane at the bottom as well as the Project List pane on the upper left pane.

E. Create a Link

1. Select the text you’d like to link in any topic.

2. Click Insert > Hyperlink Popup from the menu or click the Insert Hyperlink button on the tool bar to display the Insert Hyperlink dialog box:

How to Create a RoboHelp10 Project - Create Hyperlink - Basic Tutorial 5

3. Enter the URL or link destination address, or select it from the drop-down list.

4. Select the appropriate display option and a screen tip text if you like.

5. Select the destination file to which you are linking.

6. Click OK to create the hyperlink.

F. Generate the Help File

To generate a copy of your help file and view it inside your web browser click the Generate Primary Layout button (Yellow Question mark) on the  tool bar:

How to Create a RoboHelp10 Project - Generate Project - Basic Tutorial 6
You can accomplish the same by selecting File > Generate > Primary Layout from the menu bar.

5 Comments

  1. David Mathi Raj on September 19, 2012 at 7:17 am

    Thanks Mr. Ugur.



    • admin on September 19, 2012 at 8:49 am

      David, my pleasure. Have a great day! Ugur



  2. Laura on March 9, 2016 at 11:33 am

    How do I get back to the New Project wizard to change the Project Title?…using the Project settings under the file menu does not work…I opened a new RH project and when I put in a project title it came up on the title bar of the chm output…I went and tried to change that title using the project settings (as it says in your documentation) and it did not take the change…is there a workaround?…I have a Please enter the Project Title here in the title bar of my output chm that I cannot change…
    thanx, Laura



    • techwriter on March 9, 2016 at 12:29 pm

      Laura, when you change the Project Title through File > Project Settings the title bar of the new CHM file DOES display the new project title. I just checked it a couple times. Perhaps your copy of RH got corrupted? Have you tried restarting or reinstalling your RH? A few months back I was getting some really strange CHM compilation errors. I have uninstalled and then reinstalled RH and the errors disappeared.



  3. Mohsin on August 9, 2016 at 10:16 am

    We have already a help file(.chm format) built in older version , How we can import it to Robohelp & update with new contents.