Content Import and Migration

ClickHelp allows you to migrate from many different tools importing your content in several formats. They include HTML, MS Word, Confluence, MadCap Flare, RoboHelp, and more. You can find a complete list of the supported formats below.

Migration is a full process of transferring your content from one documentation tool to another. It begins with searching for a suitable tool and ends when all your content is ready to use in a new tool. It consists of many stages, including the import process, content cleanup before and after the import, etc.

If you have questions, need help with migration, or if you want to import a custom/unsupported format, ClickHelp team will be happy to look into it! Contact us at support@clickhelp.com.

If you want to jump straight to action, feel free to follow the guides for importing from specific tools (for guides on importing from specific file formats, see a section below):

But if you want to learn more about migration to ClickHelp and how the import process works in our tool, continue reading.

Searching for a Suitable and Compatible Tool

Every migration process starts with searching for a tool that can import the documentation you have and meets your requirements. It's great that you've already found one! ClickHelp has a variety of import formats, so there shouldn't be any problems with migration from the most popular authoring tools.

If you want to migrate to ClickHelp using the unsupported format, you can always contact us via sales@clickhelp.com. Our Migration Team will be happy to look for the possibility to ease your migration process!

Before bringing in all of your content, it may be good to look at the tool in action. You can book a live demo, get a free trial, and follow our Quick Start Guide to get acquainted with ClickHelp.

Preparing the Content Before the Import

Since you are moving to the topic-based authoring tool, you may need to spend some time restructuring your content, especially if you use a non-topic-based tool like MS Word. Feel free to make an experiment and import your content to see what it will look like after import. Then you might get a clue on how to structure your content in your current tool to achieve the best results.

We also recommend reading through some of the following topics, depending on the file format you are using for import to ClickHelp:

Before importing the content, think over its future structure. Because in ClickHelp, in addition to the possibility to group your topics under a parent node in the TOC, you can divide content into different projects.

Don't forget to check your content and delete the documents and files you don't need to bring in.

Import Process

Import is an automated process that takes your content in any supported format and brings it into ClickHelp. It can be a separate operation, or it can be part of the migration process. When part of the migration, import speeds up the process significantly, as it rids you of the need to copy-paste content manually. We recommend always checking your content after the import to ensure it is correctly transferred.

ClickHelp supports the following import formats:

File format	Description
CHM file	Microsoft Compiled HTML Help. Recommended format.
HTML/XHTML/Web Help zipped	Topics' markup, images, styles and scripts in a single ZIP archive.
DOC or DOCX	Microsoft Word file.
RTF file	Rich Text Format.
ODT file	OpenDocument, OpenOffice.org file format.

If you have a choice on the output format, here are some notes that may help you decide the best one:

• The recommended format is CHM since its internal structure is based on HTML, which provides the best import results. The importing process preserves the Table of Contents structure, the Index keywords, styles, and scripts of the original manual. To learn more, refer to this topic: Import from CHM.
• The WebHelp format contains additional files like navigation, scripts, and the like, so if you import a WebHelp file, it will be required to clean up the formatting before and after importing — delete unnecessary HTML files like master or search pages. Moreover, topics are stored in one folder in a WebHelp file, so after importing, they will be on the same level, and you will have to reorganize them manually. It's easy with the drag&drop support in the Table of Contents panel. To learn more about importing WebHelp or any other HTML-based format, refer to this topic: Import from HTML.
• The MS Word format is very different from the web formats, so you may see slight styling differences after the import. ClickHelp will perform style cleanup to make it easier to maintain the imported content in the future. To learn more, refer to this topic: Import from Microsoft Word.

You can find links to a detailed description of the import process depending on the file format you are using above.

Content Clean-Up After the Import

After you've finished importing the content, there are several things we recommend doing:

• Look through your content and check whether all content has been correctly transferred. Fix where necessary.
• Replace elements generated by your former tool (See Also lists, Next/Previous navigation links, footers, and headers) with those offered by ClickHelp. You can use Global Find and Replace to find and delete (or replace) those elements across the whole portal at once.
• Make sure the content is structured following your needs. Restructure it if needed.

Although most of the time it's enough to run an import operation on your existing content to be a step away from delivering your content to your readers, the more well-structured your legacy content is, the better the import results are.

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