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Hyperlinking to Documents

Amber

26 September 2007 18:18

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Hello,

I am using Help Studio 2 and am trying to create hyperlinks to Excel and PDF files within the different topics.  I have copied all of the files into my project folder.  When I link to a PDF file, and test the link from within HelpStudio, the PDF file opens fine. However, once I build the help file, the link does not do anything.

Also, with the excel files, I keep getting prompted with a Save As dialog box once it opens the Excel file (both through the help studio and once it is compiled).  Is this normal?

Thanks for any help.

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9 comments

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  Richard Sloggett 27 September 2007 05:58

  You would need to add those files to the project explorer (Project\Add Other File, or by dragging and dropping from Windows Explorer) in order to have HelpStudio compile them into the .chm and therefore available on your end users machines. Also be sure that the links to those files in the HelpStudio content are just the filename (.e.g. mydoc.pdf) and not the full local path. Let me know if you have any further problems.

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  Amber 27 September 2007 09:03

  Hi Richard,

  Thank you for your reply.

  I did add the files to the Project Explorer, they are all listed underneath "Other Files".  As far as I know the files are holding the entire path, when I added them the program asked if I wanted to copy them to the project folder and I said yes. If I right click on these files, they all have checkmarks beside the option to include in the output.

  Also, once the help file is compiled, the .xls files are available, they just don't open properly.  When I select a link that opens an .xls, I get a windows prompt asking if I would like to open, save or cancel this file.  If I click open, it opens the excel file in the .chm window, but then presents a Save As box asking where I want to save a copy of this file.

  The link for the PDF in the compiled .chm just doesn't work, I click the link and nothing happens.  I hope that you can help me with this, I am supposed to include this file in a project that is getting delivered tomorrow.

  Thanks

  Amber

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  Richard Sloggett 27 September 2007 09:13

  When you open a file contained in a .chm, the security process is pretty much the same as if you had opened it from the internet, so the 'Open, Save or Cancel' prompt sounds valid.

  Excel will recalculate a spreadsheet when you open it so I'm not suprised that Excel is prompting to save on exit - this is pretty standard behavior and I don't know of a way to get around that - perhaps a setting in the spreadsheet you can set to prevent recalculation on open?

  Can you check the link to the PDF in your project and ensure that the link target is only the filename, not the full local path. If you still have problems with that, forward either a ZIP of your HelpStudio project, or the .chm, to support@innovasys.com so we can investigate further.

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  Amber 27 September 2007 09:18

  Okay, first, I'm not sure how I can check that the link to the PDF is just the file name, not the path. It too is copied into the project folder, and I can see the file under the "Other Files" list.  I can double click it from that list and it opens fine.

  I was originally planning on converting all of the Excel files to PDF so that the user doesn't try to click on "active" links within the file, however, since the PDF option isn't working, I can't do that yet.

  I will try to send you a ZIP of my project.

  Thanks

  Amber

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  Richard Sloggett 27 September 2007 09:24

  Somewhere in your content you have a hyperlink to the PDF, or a Table of Contents node pointing to the PDF, right? For hyperlinks, click on the hyperlink and select 'Hyperlink' from the context menu. That will show you the target URL - it will either be just the PDF filename (correct) or a full local path (incorrect). For Table of Contents nodes that point to a PDF, you can see the target URL in the properties window when the node is selected.

  If you can send over the ZIPped project, I can check this out for you.

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  Amber 27 September 2007 09:25

  Richard,

  The size of my project files zipped is 64MB, the size of just the CHM iteself zipped is 32MB. I won't be able to email these files.

  Amber

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  Amber 27 September 2007 09:34

  I checked the hyperlinks, if I right click on the link, and choose hyperlink from the list, it shows me that it is linked to the file located in the Other Files folder of the project.  This is true for both the PDF file and the XLS files.

  Is there a certain way that I need to create a PDF file? Or can I use any file created by any person?

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  Richard Sloggett 27 September 2007 09:44

  You can upload your project ZIP to our support web server:

  ftp://216.198.192.135/

  username: 'uploads'
  password 'innovasys'

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  Amber 27 September 2007 09:53