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MadCap Flare Tips and Shortcuts

So, this blog page is basically a place where I keep handy shortcuts and tips for MadCap Flare. These are mostly one-liner, handy things to know and use as I develop my projects. Sorry for the current lack of organization, but I promise to add appropriate headers once I have enough here to make it worthwhile. Hope you find it useful, and if you have any special tips yourself, please feel free to submit them!

Continuing a Numbered List

I often have a nested description under a numbered list. In WORD and FRAMEMAKER, I simply apply a special style to the next paragraph to continue my numbered list after the nested description. How to do this in Flare?

Place your cursor in the paragraph from which you want to continue numbering.
Navigate to the Formatting Toolbar and click the List Actions Button.
Select Continue Sequence.

Bullet Icons are huge in Flare 10 - Why?

All of a sudden, all my bullet icons (.png) format became huge when displayed in Flare. After a bit of searching in the Software Forums, I found the solution. Flare 10 automatically checks “Automatically resize low DPI Images“. URGH.

The fix is:

File > Options > General Tab > Uncheck Automatically Resize Low DPI Images

Create Character Styles in Flare?

I wanted to be able to map my Character Styles (bold, italicize, highlight, color, footnote) from Framemaker and Word with matching Character Styles in Flare. To do this:

Open the CSS file that you are using.
Select the span tag in the Stylesheet Editor.
Click Add Class.
Type a name for the Character Style (bold, italicize, highlight, color, footnote, etc ) and click OK.
Format the Character Style with the features that you want.
Save your changes.
Test by applying these styles to sample content – select content, select the span class from the style drop-down list.

I found this tip in Scott DeLoach’s page, along with some other great tips you may find useful. See http://www.clickstart.net/presentations/flaretips_writersua10.pdf .

Flare – Using File Tag Sets to Track Source of Content

Posted in MadCap Flare, Tips and Hints

As you have probably realized by now, I am importing and merging a large amount of content from a broad variety of Word and Framemaker books that we have written. For reasons of organization, searchability, single-sourcing, and future maintenance, I wanted to be able to identify WHICH book each of the Flare generated files and graphics originally came from! Unfortunately, at this time, Flare does NOT allow you to automatically attach prefixes to filenames at the time of import. For example, if I wanted to prefix every imported file and graphic with ‘FL_‘ to indicate that this is from a =manual about Flare. Doing this would let me easily identify any file, and its original source manual, just by looking at the filename. File sorting would also be much easier (especially if I start moving files from their original import folder to another folder). But sadly, this remains another feature request that more people have to ask for before they make it happen. Sooooo….what to do!

Well, with a little thought and assistance from the Flare Tech Support, we came up with a workaround so that I would at least be able to tag each file with the name of the source manual. That’s right, “TAG”! Typically, File tags are used to assign authors, or track project milestones. But you can also use it to identify the source of a document. So first you creat a File Tag Set, then you apply the appropriate tag to each file, or group of files. You can then generate reports, export by tags, etc, etc. Hurrah!

Add a File Tag Set

Navigate to the Project Explorer tab.
Right mouse click on Advanced and selecct Add File Tag Set.
Set the following to suit our needs. I entered the following for tracking my book sources:
1. Source ==> New from Template >Factory Templates > MyFileTagSet.
2. FileName ==> FileSource
3. Tag Type ==> Book Names
4. Description ==>Enter any description that will help you to identify the function of this tag
Click Add to view a table for File Source (currently blank)
Enter each new tag (book name in this case) and a description of each tag.
Choose File> Save to save all your tags.

Apply a File Tag to a File

Now that you have entered your book names, you can apply this tag to each file (either individually, or as a group). Seeing as I did this to save time, I prefer to select a whole bunch of files, and then apply the appropriate file tag to it. Here’s what I did.

Navigate to the Content Explorer tab.
Open the folder containing the files you want to tag.
Select all the files that you want to tag.
Click F4 to open the Properties dialog box for these files.
Select the File Tags tab.
Select the Tag Type from the drop down list. In my case, I choose Book Names.
Check or select the File Tag that applies to this collection of files.
Click OK to apply that file tag to all the selected files.

Learn More

You can find more detailed information about this, as well as different ways to access these file tag options in the Flare Online Help.

Word Tips and Shortcuts

Posted in MS Word, Tips and Hints

The following is a collection of quick tips and fixes that I have found useful over the course of my career, when working with MS Word. Most of these refer to Word 2010, but will often work with older and newer versions.

I’ll just keep adding and updating these as I use them. Just click the little icon beside each tip for more information. Hope you find them useful too!

Do you need to print or view a list of the current styles used in your document, with a brief summary of the each style’s characteristics?

This is the simplest technique I have found. Love to know if there are other better methods.

Choose File> Print.
In the Settings drop-down list, select Styles.
In your Printer drop-down list, select PDF. ( I usually select PDF since the output list of styles can be quite large).
Click Print to generate a PDF file with a list of styles used in your document.

Posts made in October, 2014