eHelp RoboHelp

Creating Internal Jumps

The advantage online help has over printed manuals is the ability to quickly jump from one piece of information to another using help hotspots. Help hotspots are links that are created from either text or a graphic. One type of help hotspot is called a jump, and it simply jumps from the current help topic to another help topic located in the same help file.

To create a jump:

In Word, select the text or graphic you want to use as the link.
Right-click and select Insert Help Jump... from the popup.

The Insert Help Hotspot dialog box appears. Use this dialog box to define general link properties.
Enter the text you want to use as the help hotspot in the Hotspot Text: field if no text appears.

If you selected a block of text, that block of text already appears in this field.
Specify document within the current help project that contains the topic you want the help hotspot to link to in the Docuemnt: drop down.
Select the topic within the document you want to link to in the Topic: list.

You can also type the topic ID for the topic you want to use in the field above the list. When you select a topic, it's topic ID appears in the field.
Specify how the help hotspot should look in the Appearance: drop down.

I usually select "No Color" for a variety of reasons that I don't want to get into here. You can use "Normal" if you have specified the color for jumps in the project settings.
Click OK.

RoboHelp creates the jump, underlining the text users will click on. If you have Word set up to display hidden text, you can see the topic to which the help hotspot links. From here, you can format the help hotspot text any way you want.