Converting MS Word files into CHM Help files

[RichardL]

Unashamed plug…

One of the major projects I am involved with resulted in a 21,000 line Pure BASIC source file and a User Manual of 110 pages with over 100 screen shots and diagrams in it. Today, my challenge was to convert the manual, which is in MS Word, into a Help File in .CHM format.

I tried a number of utilities to do this and was invited to pay a four figure sum for a program that would convert my .doc into a .chm file. No thanks.

Believe me there is some rubbish out there!

I finally found a program that worked, utterly without hassle or complications of any sort. On the opening screenI browsed to my .DOC file, clicked a button and in about twenty seconds there was a ready-to-go help file with all of the drawings etc embedded and the indexing sorted out. Brilliant!

The program in question is Word-2-CHM 2009 Pro from Macrobject. It costs $299 (or $199 for a Lite version) which is not expensive for a professional tool that does “exactly what is says on the tin”. I have no hesitation recommending it to programmers who have targets to meet and need to cost their time at commercial rates.

RichardL

[Shardik]

Did you already give Microsoft HTML Help Workshop a try? I have worked with it for years (WinNT and WinXP, it even supports Win9x) to convert Word 97 or Word 2003 documents to .CHM files. It also contains a nice Image Snapshot utility with which I have taken all my window and gadget snaphots for the documentation. (Although I haven't tried it yet with a manual of 110 pages...) And it's free... (Although I know that this is not a strong argument. If the Macrobject product could increase my productivity and/or circumvents limitations that HTML Workshop could impose on me, it would of course be worthwhile to spend the money...)

Thank you for your tip.