MadCap Flare Tips and Shortcuts

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?

  1. Place your cursor in the paragraph from which you want to continue numbering.
  2. Navigate to the Formatting Toolbar and click the List Actions Button.
  3. 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:

  1. Open the CSS file that you are using.
  2. Select the span tag in the Stylesheet Editor.
  3. Click Add Class.
  4. Type a name for the Character Style (bold, italicize, highlight, color, footnote, etc ) and click OK.
  5. Format the Character Style with the features that you want.
  6. Save your changes.
  7. 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 .