Turn Your Documentation into an AI Knowledge Source with HelpNDoc

Your documentation already contains something incredibly valuable: the knowledge your users need to succeed. Every carefully written explanation, troubleshooting tip, and step-by-step guide can also help an AI assistant answer your users’ questions. Imagine giving your readers another way to explore your documentation by chatting with an AI assistant and asking questions such as “How do I get started?” or “Which settings should I use?” Markdown works particularly well as an interchange format for AI tools because it preserves useful structure, such as headings and lists, without unnecessary visual styling. And with HelpNDoc, producing AI-friendly Markdown fits directly into your existing publishing workflow. You can generate it from the same project you already use for help files, websites, manuals, and eBooks. There is no Markdown syntax to learn and no separate version of your documentation to write. 📝 Markdown: A Simple Format That Opens New Possibilities Markdown is a plain text format that uses simple markers to identify elements such as headings, lists, and links. Markdown keeps your documentation’s content and structure, including text, headings, links, tables, and numbered steps, without the fonts, colors, and page layouts of a finished publication. This makes it particularly useful for AI tools, which can more reliably process your explanations and instructions in a straightforward text format. The structure remains useful, too: headings identify sections, while lists and numbered steps keep related information together. For technical writers, this creates an important opportunity: the documentation you already write for your readers can also provide the knowledge an AI assistant uses to answer their questions. And you should be able to take advantage of that without becoming a Markdown expert. With HelpNDoc, you can. ✍️ Keep Writing the Way You Already Do You do not need to become a Markdown author to publish Markdown. All you have to do is keep creating great documentation in HelpNDoc: organize your topics, write in the visual editor, add images, and refine your explanations. When you are ready, HelpNDoc turns that content into Markdown for you. Your existing project provides everything you need, and the same familiar authoring environment handles both your everyday writing and your Markdown publishing. The best part? Every improvement you make can benefit both your readers and your AI tools. Clarify an explanation or add a troubleshooting tip once, then regenerate your user manual and Markdown output to include the update in both. Each improvement is reflected wherever you publish that documentation. ⚙️ How to Generate Markdown in Just a Few Clicks Turning your existing documentation into Markdown takes just a few clicks, with options to customize the output whenever you need them. With your HelpNDoc project open, follow these three steps: Open the Home ribbon tab. Click the lower half of Generate Help. Select Markdown Documentation. That’s it! HelpNDoc generates your Markdown files using the project’s current settings. This quick generation workflow makes it easy to try the format with content you have already written. When you want to customize the output, click the upper half of Generate Help to open the Generate Documentation window. Select your Markdown build, or add a Markdown output, then choose where to save the files and which template to use. Your output settings remain saved in the project, ready for the next time you generate Markdown alongside your other publications. You can also fine-tune the result through the Markdown template settings. Choose compact output, adjust line wrapping, or select a heading style, all directly in HelpNDoc. For AI workflows, one template deserves a closer look: Single page Markdown, which brings your documentation together in one convenient file. 📄 One File, a Whole New Way to Explore Your Documentation A single Markdown file can put your documentation’s knowledge within reach of an AI assistant and give your readers a new way to find answers. HelpNDoc’s Single page Markdown template gathers your documentation into one file, making it convenient to share with a compatible AI assistant or knowledge service. Designed with AI-friendly documentation reuse in mind, it handles the assembly for you, bringing your topics together into a comprehensive package without any manual work. For additional context, enable Export additional project and topics info in the single-page template settings. HelpNDoc can include details such as the author, version, language, and topic identifiers, giving AI tools more information about the documentation they are using. With your exported file connected to a compatible AI service, people can explore your documentation through conversation: A customer could ask for help completing a setup procedure. A new employee could ask questions about your onboarding guide. A support colleague could describe a problem and ask for relevant troubleshooting steps. To get started, choose an AI service that lets you upload Markdown documents as reference material, then add the file generated by HelpNDoc. The assistant can use that content to answer questions about the subject covered by your documentation, drawing on the explanations and instructions you have already written. Keeping that knowledge current follows the same simple process: update your documentation in HelpNDoc, generate a new Markdown file, and replace the previous version in your AI service. And that flexibility extends well beyond Markdown. The same source content can also become polished websites, printable manuals, help files, and eBooks, giving every audience a convenient way to access your knowledge. 🌐 The Same Knowledge, Ready for Every Audience From an AI conversation to a printed manual, HelpNDoc lets you share the same knowledge in the format that works best for each reader. You can do a lot with the documentation you already have. Publish a responsive help website, create a polished manual, offer an eBook, or supply knowledge to an AI assistant: HelpNDoc can generate all of these outputs from one project, without requiring you to rewrite your content for each format. Here’s how each option can serve your audience: Output format Who it can help Raw Markdown Teams providing documentation to compatible AI assistants and other content tools Responsive HTML websites Users browsing online help on desktops, tablets, and phones CHM help files Users accessing help alongside Windows applications Word documents Colleagues who need an editable document for review or further work PDF documents Readers who want a polished manual to download, share, or print ePub and Kindle eBooks Readers who prefer an eBook experience on compatible devices Qt Help files Users accessing application help through the cross-platform Qt Help framework All of these publishing options benefit from every improvement you make. Update a procedure once, then let HelpNDoc regenerate all the outputs you need. Your website, printable manual, and Markdown knowledge file can all include the latest instructions, making it easy to keep your publications consistent as your documentation grows. The flexibility goes beyond choosing a format. HelpNDoc’s conditional generation lets you tailor the content itself, creating different versions for customers, administrators, and support teams from the same project. 🎯 Unlimited Variations, Without Duplicating Your Project One documentation project can become an entire collection of tailored publications, each with the content its audience needs. Imagine offering customers a straightforward guide to everyday tasks, giving administrators detailed configuration instructions, and equipping your support team with additional troubleshooting information. With HelpNDoc, you can create all of these variations while maintaining the shared content in one place. HelpNDoc’s conditional generation system lets you choose which topics and sections appear in each output. You can create an unlimited number of builds, each representing a version you want to publish, including multiple variations of the same format. Set up your content rules once, and HelpNDoc automatically includes the appropriate material whenever you generate those builds. Conditional generation is also useful for AI workflows. The same project could supply a customer-focused Markdown file for a public-facing assistant and a more detailed version for an internal support assistant. Alongside those files, you could generate HTML and PDF manuals tailored to different product editions. Each output gets the relevant information, and every shared explanation remains easy to update. Together, these capabilities give your existing documentation room to grow: more formats, more audiences, and more ways to put your knowledge to work, all from the project you already maintain. 🤖 Give Your Documentation a New Role Your next AI knowledge source could already be taking shape in the documentation you write every day. The content that guides readers through your manuals and websites can also help an AI assistant answer their questions, giving people another convenient way to find and use the knowledge you provide. You have already done the most valuable part: creating the knowledge. HelpNDoc makes it easy to share that work as raw Markdown, alongside polished publications and tailored variations for your different audiences. Keep writing in the familiar visual editor, and let HelpNDoc handle the conversion. Ready to explore what your documentation could do next? Download HelpNDoc for free for personal use and evaluation, open your project, and generate your first Markdown output. In just a few clicks, you can prepare your documentation for use with a compatible AI assistant. Want to create great documentation? HelpNDoc is free, fully functional, and easy to use. Produce your first multi-format documentation in the next minute or so. Download HelpNDoc ›

Posted on: 10 September 2026 | 7:00 pm

Built-in MCP Server, Expanded AI Tools, and Individual Topic Export in HelpNDoc 10.8

We are pleased to announce the release of HelpNDoc 10.8, a major update that opens new possibilities for AI-assisted documentation workflows. This version introduces a built-in Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, enabling compatible external AI clients to inspect and manage the project currently open in HelpNDoc. HelpNDoc 10.8 also significantly expands the tools available to its built-in AI Assistant. Topics, keywords, tags, statuses, library items, project properties, and parts of the HelpNDoc user interface can now be inspected and managed through a consistent set of purpose-built tools. These capabilities are shared with the MCP server, giving technical writers the choice of working with HelpNDoc’s integrated AI Assistant or a compatible external AI client. Beyond AI integration, this release adds the ability to export individual topics directly to HTML and PDF, improves scripting support for Markdown content and picture attributes, produces cleaner generated documentation, and includes important updates to project storage, application stability, high-DPI support, accessibility, compatibility, licensing, and API documentation. As always, HelpNDoc is free for personal use and evaluation, so you can download HelpNDoc 10.8 today and explore all the improvements firsthand. 🤖 Built-in MCP Server: Connect HelpNDoc to External AI Clients HelpNDoc 10.8 includes a built-in MCP server that enables compatible external AI clients to inspect and manage the currently open HelpNDoc project. Artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly useful part of technical writing, content maintenance, and documentation quality assurance. However, an AI client can only provide meaningful assistance when it has access to accurate project information and purpose-built operations. HelpNDoc 10.8 addresses this with a built-in Model Context Protocol server. MCP is a standard that allows compatible AI clients to discover and use tools exposed by an application. In practical terms, it gives supported external AI tools a structured way to interact with the project currently open in HelpNDoc. The MCP server can be started whenever you want to work with a compatible external AI client, then stopped just as easily when the task is complete. Compatible clients such as Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, and other MCP-compatible tools can connect to HelpNDoc and use the operations it provides. Depending on the requested task, an AI client can inspect project metadata, navigate the table of contents, read or replace topic content, maintain keywords and tags, manage library items, update statuses, reorganize project structures, and perform other supported content-management actions. This enables practical workflows that go far beyond generating isolated paragraphs. For example, an external AI client could: Audit an existing project for quality and missing information. It could inspect the table of contents, topic content, statuses, keywords, build tags, and reusable assets to identify incomplete sections, inconsistent organization, missing cross-references, outdated metadata, or topics that may be excluded from the wrong builds. It could then summarize the findings and navigate HelpNDoc directly to the areas that need attention. Improve and reorganize an established documentation project. It could review selected topics, rewrite unclear passages, add missing explanations, standardize terminology, update reusable snippets or variables, and reorganize topics or keywords where the current structure is difficult to follow. The client could also apply the appropriate statuses and build tags so the improved content fits the project’s review and publishing workflow. Create a new documentation project from a software interface screenshot. Starting from screenshots of an application’s windows, dialogs, and controls, it could propose a table of contents, create the corresponding topics, and draft initial instructions based on the visible user interface. It could then place the topics in the correct hierarchy, add reusable pictures to the Library, and open each new topic in HelpNDoc for review and refinement. Go much further with the complete HelpNDoc toolset. These examples represent only a small selection of the available possibilities. Consult the HelpNDoc AI and MCP tools documentation to explore every available tool and learn how compatible AI clients can use them. The result is a flexible bridge between HelpNDoc and the growing ecosystem of MCP-compatible AI clients. Technical writers can continue using their preferred authoring environment while bringing external AI tools into project inspection, content creation, maintenance, and review workflows. 🧰 Expanded AI Toolset: More Than a Writing Assistant HelpNDoc’s AI integrations can now help manage an entire documentation project, not just generate or rewrite text. The built-in HelpNDoc AI Assistant and external clients connected through the MCP server now have access to the same powerful project tools. You can choose the AI experience you prefer while keeping HelpNDoc at the center of your authoring workflow. An AI assistant can create and reorganize topics, improve existing content, update project information, maintain keywords and build tags, manage review statuses, and work with reusable Library items such as snippets, variables, pictures, equations, and Raw Code. This makes ambitious requests possible. You could ask an assistant to review a project for missing or outdated information, improve a complete section while preserving its structure, prepare different editions using build tags, or create the foundations of a new manual from screenshots and product information. The assistant can also bring the relevant topic, keyword, or Library item into view when it finishes, so you can immediately inspect and refine its work in HelpNDoc. These are only a few examples. See the complete list of AI and MCP tools to discover all the operations available to the built-in AI Assistant and compatible external clients. 📤 Export Individual Topics to HTML and PDF HelpNDoc 10.8 makes it easier to share exactly the content you need by adding HTML and PDF to the individual topic export options. HelpNDoc is designed to generate complete documentation projects in multiple formats from a single source. Sometimes, however, you only need to share one topic. HelpNDoc already supported exporting individual topics to Microsoft Word and Markdown. Version 10.8 now adds HTML and PDF, giving you more flexibility when reviewing, distributing, or reusing selected content. A teacher can export the lesson needed for today’s class as a PDF, ready to print, send to students, or upload to a learning platform. A technical writer can share a single topic with an engineer, translator, legal reviewer, product manager, or customer without generating and distributing the entire manual. HTML is ideal when the topic needs to be opened in a browser, added to an internal portal, or shared as lightweight web content. PDF is a better fit when layout consistency, offline reading, or printing matters. With these new export options, HelpNDoc 10.8 makes focused reviews, selective sharing, and one-off content distribution much quicker and more convenient. 🧩 Improved Scripting and Cleaner Output HelpNDoc 10.8 improves scripting workflows and fixes several issues affecting generated documentation. The scripting API now offers better support for inserting Markdown content into topics and snippets. Scripts can also manage picture CSS classes and HTML IDs, giving developers more control over automated content and generated output. Several scripting operations are now more reliable, including InsertContentFromHTMLFile, which correctly reports whether the insertion succeeded, and topic moves using htamAddChildFirst, which now place topics in the expected location. Generated documentation is cleaner too. Unused keywords are no longer included in CHM and HTML indexes, and tab-indented Raw Code content no longer introduces unwanted   entities in Markdown output. Together, these improvements make automation more predictable and generated documentation easier to maintain. 🛠️ Reliability, Compatibility, and Usability Improvements HelpNDoc 10.8 also delivers a broad set of improvements for a smoother, safer, and more reliable authoring experience. The updated user interface improves stability, rendering, accessibility, high-DPI support, compatibility, and security. Resizing windows is also easier on displays using scaling above 100 percent. Project storage is now faster and more resilient, with stronger protection against corruption and automatic recovery from certain index problems. Open and Save dialogs are more stable as well. Developers and template authors will find clearer and more complete scripting API documentation, with improved organization and more reliable links between related types. License information and verification messages have also been refined, including more accurate command-line details for both current and legacy license keys. As always, the full list of changes is available in the detailed release notes below. 🚀 Download HelpNDoc 10.8 Today HelpNDoc 10.8 is available for free for personal use and evaluation. Download it now and discover its new AI-assisted documentation capabilities. Whether you are connecting an external AI client through the new MCP server, managing project content with the expanded AI toolset, sharing a single topic as HTML or PDF, automating work through the improved scripting API, or simply benefiting from a more reliable authoring environment, HelpNDoc 10.8 delivers powerful new capabilities for technical writers and documentation teams. 👉 Download HelpNDoc 10.8 today and explore a more connected, flexible, and productive way to create and maintain documentation. Want to create great documentation? HelpNDoc is free, fully functional, and easy to use. Produce your first multi-format documentation in the next minute or so. Download HelpNDoc › Change log Version 10.8.0.452 – Release date: Aug 20, 2026 Added a built-in MCP server, enabling compatible AI clients to securely access HelpNDoc project information and perform supported content-management tasks Updated the HelpNDoc AI toolset with complete topic, keyword, tag, status, library, and UI management capabilities, including safer operations, unified APIs, and new delete and content-management actions Added the ability to export individual topics as HTML or PDF, complementing the existing Word and Markdown export options Added script support for Markdown content insertion and picture class/ID management, and fixed InsertContentFromHTMLFile to return its success status Fixed an issue where moving the first topic could fail when using the htamAddChildFirst option in the UI or API Fixed the CHM and HTML generators so they no longer export keywords that are not associated with any topics Fixed unwanted   entities appearing in tab-indented raw code library items when generating Markdown documentation Updated the overall user interface to improve application stability, rendering, high-DPI support, accessibility, compatibility, and security, including a larger form resize area on monitors using display scaling above 100% Improved API documentation with additional global types, clearer organization and sorting, enhanced styling, and more reliable cross-links between related types Improved project storage reliability and performance, with stronger protection against corrupted files and automatic recovery of certain index issues Improved Open/Save dialog stability by fixing an access violation that could occur when changing the selected file or folder Improved command-line license information to correctly display validity details for both current and legacy license keys Improved license verification messages to provide clearer, more accurate guidance when checking or refreshing a license

Posted on: 19 August 2026 | 7:00 pm

How to Publish Documentation Topics Without Showing Them in the Table of Contents

A well-designed documentation website needs a clear and focused table of contents. Readers should be able to scan its navigation and immediately understand where to begin, without having to work through pages that are useful but not part of the main documentation journey. Yet many projects still need standalone pages such as a privacy policy, terms of service, legal notices, a cookie policy, an accessibility statement, or copyright information. These pages must be published and easy to reach from a footer or a contextual hyperlink, but they do not necessarily belong beside tutorials, procedures, and reference topics in the main navigation. HelpNDoc provides an elegant solution: a topic can be generated normally while remaining hidden from the published table of contents. This makes it possible to keep supporting pages available wherever readers need them, without compromising the clarity of the documentation structure. 🌐 Publish More Content Without Cluttering Navigation A focused table of contents guides readers through the documentation, while standalone pages remain available through carefully placed links. The table of contents is one of the most important parts of any HTML documentation website. It communicates the structure of the project, highlights the most useful entry points, and helps readers move between related subjects. As a project grows, however, placing every published page in that navigation can make it unnecessarily long and harder to scan. Some pages serve a different purpose. A privacy policy may be linked from the footer of every page. Terms of service may only need to appear beside a registration or download link. A legal notice, copyright statement, accessibility statement, or cookie policy may need a permanent URL without becoming part of the reader’s normal learning path. The same principle can apply beyond legal content. A teacher may publish an optional glossary page linked from individual lessons. A student may provide supporting research material through a direct reference. A technical writer may create a short compatibility note that is only relevant from one procedure. A product team may include an acknowledgements page or a complete list of third-party licenses accessible from an “About” topic. In each case, the page remains part of the generated documentation, so it benefits from the same styling, branding, hyperlinks, and publishing workflow as every other topic. Only its appearance in the table of contents changes. This is much cleaner than maintaining separate HTML files by hand, and it preserves HelpNDoc’s central advantage: one structured project that can be published to multiple documentation formats. Readers can reach these standalone pages through hyperlinks to specific topics, links added to an HTML template, or direct topic URLs. Because HelpNDoc manages the topic and its identifier inside the project, authors can continue editing, reviewing, and generating it alongside the rest of their content. ⚙️ Two Simple Ways to Create Standalone Pages in HelpNDoc HelpNDoc offers two practical approaches, depending on whether standalone pages are scattered throughout the project or managed as one organized group. 1️⃣ Alternative 1: Hide Each Standalone Topic Individually The most direct approach is to create each page as a normal HelpNDoc topic and set its visibility to “Hidden from table of contents”. The topic can remain anywhere in the project’s authoring structure, exactly where it is most convenient for the writer. Start by creating a normal topic for the page and enter its content in the topic editor. Select that topic in the table of contents, open its topic properties from the Home ribbon or its right-click menu, then change its visibility to “Hidden from table of contents”. This setting is deliberately different from making a topic completely hidden. A topic hidden from the table of contents is still generated and can still be linked to, but it is omitted from the navigation shown to readers. HelpNDoc has supported this behavior specifically to let authors publish accessible pages without displaying them in the generated TOC. Repeat the same operation for any other standalone topic. This method works particularly well when the pages belong to different parts of the authoring structure. For example, an optional glossary can remain near the training material it supports, while a legal notice can remain near project-level information. Once the topics are ready, create links to them using HelpNDoc’s built-in hyperlink tools. Choosing a specific HelpNDoc topic as the destination is preferable to manually entering a generated filename because HelpNDoc can maintain the internal relationship and produce the appropriate link for the selected output format. 2️⃣ Alternative 2: Group Them Below One Hidden Parent Topic When several standalone pages form a natural group, a cleaner approach is to create a parent topic such as “Legal”, “Policies”, or “Additional Information”, set that parent to “Hidden from table of contents”, and place the related pages beneath it as normal child topics. HelpNDoc’s table of contents editor uses a flexible tree structure, so topics can be moved and organized freely. Create the parent topic, change its visibility to “Hidden from table of contents”, then create or move the privacy policy, terms of service, legal notice, and related pages beneath it. The hidden parent branch is omitted from the generated TOC, while its child topics remain generated and available through links. This organization keeps the HelpNDoc project especially tidy. Authors can expand the hidden parent whenever they need to review or update those pages, while readers continue to see a concise navigation structure. It is a useful separation between the authoring table of contents, which can organize every topic needed by the project team, and the published table of contents, which should contain only the navigation that helps the audience. HelpNDoc also makes hidden topics easy to manage in larger projects. The table of contents can be filtered by topic properties, including visibility, so authors can quickly locate topics that are visible, completely hidden, or hidden only from the generated TOC. Both approaches keep standalone pages inside the same HelpNDoc project, where they can be edited, linked, reviewed, and published alongside the rest of the documentation. The next step is to decide whether those topics should also appear in document-based outputs such as Word or PDF. 📄 What About Word, PDF, and Other Documentation Formats? Hiding a topic from an HTML table of contents does not necessarily exclude it from document-based outputs such as Word or PDF. A topic marked “Hidden from table of contents” is still generated. This is exactly what makes it useful for HTML, CHM, or Markdown pages reached from a footer or direct link. However, the same topic may also appear as a normal section when HelpNDoc generates a Word document, PDF manual, or eBook. When those pages should only be published in HTML-based documentation, use conditional topic generation in addition to the visibility setting. HelpNDoc provides two practical ways to control this: You can assign the topic to specific build tags, such as HTML or CHM, so it is generated only by the relevant builds. The conditional topic generation guide explains how to configure these rules. Alternatively, assign a dedicated topic status and configure only the appropriate builds to generate topics with that status. This can be useful when several standalone pages share the same publishing rule. See the topic status documentation for details. The new Generation Matrix makes these rules easy to verify. It shows at a glance whether a topic will be generated in each HTML, Word, PDF, Markdown, or custom build, and explains why. 📎 Add Supporting Files Outside the Table of Contents Not every supporting file needs to become a HelpNDoc topic. Existing documents and resources can be delivered alongside the generated documentation without adding anything to its table of contents. A standalone topic is the best choice when content such as a privacy policy or legal notice should use the documentation’s normal layout and remain editable inside HelpNDoc. In other cases, the required content may already exist as a separate HTML page, PDF document, spreadsheet, form, source-code sample, downloadable archive, or other file. For resources that should be shared by every project using the same HTML-based template, they can be included as template assets. HelpNDoc copies these assets alongside the generated documentation, making this approach useful for organization-wide files shared across multiple projects, such as a standard legal page, accessibility document, copyright file, or downloadable corporate policy. For files that belong to a particular project or output, use build assets. Each build maintains its own assets and automatically writes them alongside its generated output while preserving their relative paths. This makes it possible to include a project-specific legal document with an HTML website, distribute supplementary files beside a Word or PDF manual, or package forms, examples, and reference documents with any other build. For PDF builds, a build asset can also be marked “Attach to document”, which embeds the file directly inside the generated PDF. A privacy statement, license agreement, spreadsheet, source file, or other supporting document can therefore travel with the manual as an attachment without becoming a visible chapter in its table of contents. These options complement topics hidden from the TOC. Use a hidden topic when the content should remain part of the authored documentation, and use an asset when an existing file only needs to be delivered with the appropriate output. In both cases, HelpNDoc keeps supporting content available without unnecessarily expanding the reader-facing navigation. ✅ One Project, More Publishing Freedom A topic does not need to appear in the table of contents to remain useful, accessible, and professionally published. With HelpNDoc, standalone topics can stay available through direct links while remaining outside the reader’s main navigation. Conditional generation then ensures that those topics appear only in the appropriate HTML, Word, PDF, Markdown, or custom builds. When supporting content already exists as a separate file, template assets and build assets provide another flexible option, allowing it to be delivered alongside generated documentation or embedded directly in a PDF. The result is one organized project with cleaner navigation, precise output control, and all the supporting content each audience needs. Explore HelpNDoc and discover how much control can fit inside a documentation workflow that still feels simple, then download HelpNDoc for free and start building cleaner, smarter, multi-format documentation today. Want to create great documentation? HelpNDoc is free, fully functional, and easy to use. Produce your first multi-format documentation in the next minute or so. Download HelpNDoc ›

Posted on: 23 July 2026 | 7:00 pm

Generation Matrix, Raw Code Library Items, and External Snippet Support in HelpNDoc 10.7

We are pleased to announce the release of HelpNDoc 10.7, a new update focused on giving technical writers clearer insight, more flexible content reuse, and smoother daily authoring workflows. This version introduces a powerful Generation Matrix in the Topic Analyzer, making it easy to understand exactly why a topic is or is not included in each build of a project. It also improves reusable content management with the new Raw Code library item and support for external snippet files, while delivering important refinements to the image editor, topic editor, equation editor, conditional content generation, and overall reliability. As always, HelpNDoc is free for personal use and evaluation, so you can download HelpNDoc 10.7 today and explore all the improvements firsthand. 🧩 Generation Matrix: Understand Exactly Why Topics Are Exported The new Generation Matrix in the Topic Analyzer explains why the currently analyzed topic will, or will not, be exported for every build in the project. HelpNDoc’s Topic Analyzer is an essential tool for understanding individual topics. It provides detailed statistics such as the number of paragraphs, words, and library items used in a topic. It also lists hyperlinks, anchors, incoming hyperlinks, conditions, keywords, spelling mistakes, and even the individual characters contained in the topic. HelpNDoc 10.7 makes the Topic Analyzer even more useful with the new Generation Matrix. For the currently analyzed topic, this matrix provides a build-by-build explanation of whether the topic will be exported, and why. This is especially valuable in projects that generate multiple outputs, such as a public user manual, an internal knowledge base, a PDF guide, and a Markdown export, each with its own visibility, status, and tag rules. For each build, the Generation Matrix checks the topic and its parent hierarchy. If the topic itself, or one of its parents, is hidden for a build, the matrix clearly indicates that the topic will not be exported. It also checks topic status rules: for example, when a build excludes topics marked as “In Progress”, any topic or parent topic using that status will be excluded from that output. Finally, it analyzes built-in and custom tag matching between topics, parent topics, and builds, making it clear when a topic is excluded because it does not match the build’s tag configuration. This provides an immediate answer to one of the most common documentation publishing questions: “Why is this topic missing from my output?” Instead of manually checking build settings, topic visibility, parent visibility, status filters, and tag rules one by one, writers can now see the full explanation in one place. 🧾 Raw Code Library Item: Format-Specific Custom Code for Every Output The former HTML Code library item has been renamed and expanded into Raw Code, adding support for HTML, Markdown, and text-based fallback content. The library item previously known as HTML Code has been greatly improved in HelpNDoc 10.7 and is now named Raw Code. This new name better reflects its expanded role: instead of being limited to raw HTML for HTML-based documentation formats, it can now provide format-specific content for multiple output types. Raw Code items can still include HTML code for HTML-based documentation formats such as CHM, HTML, and compatible eReader outputs. But they can now also include raw Markdown content for Markdown builds, where the code is exported directly as Markdown. For all other documentation formats, Raw Code items can provide plain text content that is exported as-is. This opens the door to much more precise output customization. Technical writers and developers can now define a single reusable library item that adapts to the output being generated. For example, the same conceptual block could output a custom HTML widget in a web manual, raw Markdown syntax in a Markdown export, and a readable text fallback in report-based documentation. By making format-specific customization reusable through the Library, HelpNDoc 10.7 helps advanced users avoid post-processing, reduce duplicated content, and maintain cleaner projects when targeting multiple documentation formats from a single source. 📚 External Snippet Support: Share Rich Content Across Projects Snippets can now be loaded from external files during generation, making reusable rich-text content easier to share and maintain across multiple projects. Snippet library items are a powerful way to reuse rich content in HelpNDoc projects. They can contain styled text and paragraphs, hyperlinks, images, tables, and other rich topic content. Until now, snippets were stored exclusively inside the HelpNDoc project file, which made them convenient within a single project but harder to share across multiple projects. HelpNDoc 10.7 introduces support for external snippet files. Snippets can now be edited and loaded from disk, allowing them to live outside the project. When generating documentation, HelpNDoc loads the external snippet content on demand, using the file’s current content at generation time. This greatly simplifies the reuse of common rich-text content across multiple projects. Teams can now maintain shared warnings, legal notices, support instructions, product descriptions, procedures, disclaimers, or reusable documentation blocks in external files and reference them from several HelpNDoc projects. When the shared file is updated, every project that uses it can benefit from the latest version the next time documentation is generated. 🖼️ Improvements in the Image Editor, Topic Editor, and Equation Editor HelpNDoc 10.7 improves several everyday editing workflows, with better image pasting behavior, more reliable Markdown copy operations, and faster equation editing. HelpNDoc’s built-in image editor makes it easy to enrich pictures with visual annotations such as stamps, text, lines, shapes, and other elements. In HelpNDoc 10.7, pasting a picture while the background layer is selected is now more flexible: you can choose whether to replace the background image or create a new image layer. This makes the image editor more versatile and easier to use. Replacing the background is ideal when updating the source screenshot or illustration, while creating a new layer is better when adding a pasted image as an overlay or composition element. HelpNDoc now lets you choose the right behavior at the moment you paste, reducing mistakes and making image editing more predictable. This release also fixes an issue where pasting a picture as the background layer could distort it: the layer is now resized correctly to fit the newly pasted picture. The Topic Editor also receives an important Markdown workflow improvement. When copying selected topic content as Markdown, embedded pictures are now included as inline Base64-encoded data. This means that when the content is pasted into a third-party Markdown editor, viewer, issue tracker, note-taking tool, or documentation platform, the pictures remain available alongside the text instead of being lost. This provides a much more reliable workflow when extracting content from HelpNDoc as Markdown. It is especially useful for reviews, collaboration, quick publishing drafts, support answers, developer documentation, and any situation where copied Markdown needs to remain self-contained without requiring separate image files. The Equation Editor has also been optimized. Its load time has been significantly reduced, especially the first time it is opened after application startup, so editing equations now feels faster and more responsive. The equation editing experience is also smoother thanks to more reliable virtual keyboard input, improved cursor navigation, and more accurate formatting for accented expressions, fences, and relation operators. Several reliability fixes complete these improvements. Large edited equations now display correctly in the Topic Editor without unwanted cropping or horizontal scroll bars, and HelpNDoc no longer risks showing the default E=mc2 equation instead of the equation being edited. Together, these refinements make mathematical and scientific authoring faster, clearer, and more dependable. 🛠️ Other New Features, Bug Fixes, and Improvements HelpNDoc 10.7 also includes additional fixes focused on cleaner generation output, more reliable copy operations, and improved editor behavior. Conditional content generation has been improved so standalone IF, ELSE, and END marker lines are now removed cleanly without leaving extra blank lines. This produces cleaner generated documentation and reduces the need for manual formatting adjustments when using conditional content extensively. This release also fixes an “Access Denied” error that could occur when copying Topic Editor content containing images. Copying rich content from HelpNDoc is now more reliable, especially when working with image-heavy topics or moving content between HelpNDoc and external applications. As always, the full list of changes is available in the detailed release notes below. 🚀 Download HelpNDoc 10.7 Today HelpNDoc 10.7 is available for free for personal use and evaluation. Download it now and experience the improvements firsthand. Whether you are auditing complex publishing rules with the new Generation Matrix, customizing multi-format output with Raw Code library items, sharing reusable rich content through external snippets, or benefiting from smoother editing and generation workflows, HelpNDoc 10.7 delivers practical improvements for technical writers working on projects of every size. 👉 Download HelpNDoc 10.7 today and discover how these enhancements can make your documentation workflow clearer, faster, and more reliable. Want to create great documentation? HelpNDoc is free, fully functional, and easy to use. Produce your first multi-format documentation in the next minute or so. Download HelpNDoc › Change log Version 10.7.0.400 – Release date: Jun 30, 2026 Added a new Generation Matrix topic analyzer that provides precise details about why each topic is or is not exported for every build in the project Renamed and improved the HTML Code library item to Raw Code, adding support for format-specific raw code exports for HTML, Markdown, and other formats Added support for importing external snippets during generation, instead of requiring them to be included in the project When pasting a picture in the image editor with the background layer selected, you can now choose to replace the background image or create a new image layer Improved Markdown copy from the Topic Editor: selected content now embeds images as inline Base64-encoded data for better compatibility with external applications Significantly reduced the Equation Editor's load time, especially the first time it is opened after application startup Improved the equation editing experience with more reliable virtual keyboard input, smoother cursor navigation, and more accurate formatting for accented expressions, fences, and relation operators Fixed the display of large edited equations in the Topic Editor, preventing cropping and unwanted horizontal scroll bars Fixed an issue that could cause the Equation Editor to show the default E=mc2 equation instead of the equation being edited Improved conditional content generation so standalone IF/ELSE/END marker lines are removed cleanly without leaving extra blank lines Fixed an "Access Denied" error that could occur when copying Topic Editor content containing images Pasting a picture as the background layer in the image editor could distort it. The layer is now resized correctly to fit the newly pasted picture

Posted on: 29 June 2026 | 7:00 pm

Expanded AI Tools, Nested Conditional Content, Faster Markdown Generation, and More in HelpNDoc 10.6

We are pleased to announce the release of HelpNDoc 10.6, the latest update to our help authoring tool. This version expands the capabilities of the AI Assistant, improves conditional content workflows, adds practical enhancements to the topic editor, introduces new code generation templates for developers, and significantly speeds up Markdown documentation generation. HelpNDoc 10.6 also includes multiple internal optimizations and fixes designed to improve reliability, reduce memory usage, and make everyday documentation authoring smoother. As always, HelpNDoc is free for personal use and evaluation, so you can download the latest version and try these improvements today. 🤖 Smarter AI Tools to Manage Projects Faster HelpNDoc 10.6 gives the built-in AI Assistant new tools to help organize, inspect, and update documentation projects more efficiently. The AI Assistant continues to become more useful for project-level documentation work. In this release, it gains access to additional tools that allow it to manage more aspects of a HelpNDoc project directly based on user instructions. The AI Assistant can now help reorganize topic and keyword trees by moving existing branches to new positions in the hierarchy. This feature is useful for restructuring large projects, moving a group of related topics under a new section, or reorganizing keywords to better align with the documentation’s terminology. HelpNDoc 10.6 also adds AI tools for managing project statuses and build tags. The assistant can list, create, and update statuses, assign statuses to topics, manage custom tags, and handle associations between topics and tags. These capabilities make it easier to maintain structured workflows, especially in projects where topics need to be reviewed, filtered, or prepared for different outputs. The AI Assistant can also retrieve or update topic properties such as icon, visibility, description, Help ID, Help Context number, aliases, page break settings, headers, and footers. It can also return the list of topics currently selected in the table of contents, which is particularly useful for batch operations on a current multi-selection. Together, these additions make the AI Assistant better suited to practical project maintenance tasks, not just content generation. 🔀 More Powerful Conditional Content Workflows Conditional content is now more flexible, with support for nested conditions and faster access to condition editing directly from the topic editor. HelpNDoc 10.6 improves the way conditional content can be authored and maintained. Conditions can now be nested inside other conditions, making it possible to create more advanced publishing logic directly in the topic editor. For example, an IF condition can now contain another IF condition, or be combined with deeper conditional structures when the documentation needs to adapt to multiple products, audiences, editions, or output targets. For projects that rely heavily on conditional content, this provides more control over how content is included or excluded during generation. ⚠️ Because this change affects how consecutive conditions are interpreted, existing projects should be reviewed carefully. In particular, an IF condition placed after another IF condition is no longer automatically treated as an ELSE IF. The built-in project analyzer can help locate conditional content project-wide, making it easier to review existing conditions and confirm that they still behave as expected. Editing existing conditional items is also simpler in this release. Conditional items inserted in the topic editor can now be modified by double-clicking them, which opens the condition editor directly. This makes it faster to adjust a condition without recreating the item. HelpNDoc 10.6 also improves the reliability and performance of conditional content rendering in the topic editor. Conditional items now use less memory and benefit from optimized rendering, which is helpful when working with complex topics or projects containing many conditional blocks. 📝 Topic Editor Improvements for Faster, Cleaner Authoring The topic editor has gained several practical improvements for working with tables, images, library items, and pasted content. HelpNDoc 10.6 adds a new way to convert selected text into a table. When text is selected in the topic editor, it can now be converted into a table with automatic detection of rows, columns, and separators. The separator can also be selected manually, using paragraphs, tabs, commas, or any other character. This feature is useful when working with structured text copied from external sources, such as spreadsheets, logs, lists, or delimited data. Instead of manually creating a table and filling each cell, the selected text can be converted into a structured table more quickly. Image handling in the topic editor has also been improved. When using Paste Special, PNG and SVG images are now preserved in their native formats instead of being converted to raw bitmap images. This preserves important format-specific features, such as PNG transparency and SVG vector data, resulting in cleaner pasted images and better long-term quality. Copying images from the topic editor to the clipboard has been improved as well. Compatible third-party applications can now receive PNG images with their transparency and other PNG-specific features preserved, while SVG images can retain their vector data when pasted into applications that support it. Library item workflows have also been refined. When a library item is selected and copied from the topic editor, it is now copied as a reusable library item and can be pasted directly into the library of another HelpNDoc project. This helps preserve important underlying data, such as image editor source information, equation data, color settings, and default picture properties, when reusing content across projects. 💻 New Code Generation Options for TypeScript, Java, and Kotlin HelpNDoc can now generate strongly typed TypeScript, Java, and Kotlin code from topic Help IDs and Help Context numbers. HelpNDoc’s code generation templates can now produce additional strongly typed code formats for development teams. HelpNDoc 10.6 adds new code templates for TypeScript, Java, and Kotlin in addition to the previously supported languages. These templates export topic identifiers such as Help IDs and Help Context numbers in ready-to-use code formats. Depending on the target language, the available formats include constants, enums, maps, object constants, and interfaces. This is particularly useful when documentation needs to be connected to a software application. Developers can use the generated identifiers to reliably link application screens, dialogs, commands, and error messages to the correct help topics, while technical writers continue to manage those identifiers from the HelpNDoc project. By generating these code units directly from the documentation project, teams can reduce manual synchronization work and avoid mismatches between the application code and the help system. ⚡ Much Faster and More Reliable Markdown Generation Markdown documentation generation has been optimized for speed and now handles project-wide counters more consistently. HelpNDoc 10.6 includes a significant performance improvement for Markdown documentation generation. Large projects can now generate Markdown output more than five times faster than before, with the most noticeable gains occurring on larger documentation sets. This optimization helps teams that use Markdown as part of a modern documentation workflow, static site pipeline, source control process, or AI-friendly content export. Faster generation reduces waiting time and makes frequent rebuilding of documentation easier during editing and review. This release also fixes an issue affecting counters in Markdown output. Counters used for numbered items such as figures, tables, or other project-wide elements now continue incrementing correctly across the whole project, instead of resetting for each topic. These improvements make Markdown generation faster and more consistent, especially for projects that rely on structured numbering. 🛠️ Additional Fixes, Performance Improvements, and Reliability Enhancements HelpNDoc 10.6 also includes several under-the-hood improvements focused on speed, stability, memory usage, and safer content generation. This release improves internal project file handling and memory management, especially when working with multiple projects in the same session or migrating older projects to the latest format. Library item caching has also been optimized to reduce memory usage and speed up processing when items are updated or removed. HelpNDoc’s script engine has been enhanced to improve stability, performance, and security across documentation templates and user automation. Several generation and migration issues have also been corrected, including cases where custom equations were replaced by defaults after upgrading older projects, and where discarded conditional content at the beginning of a line could affect the exported layout. This release also includes many additional quality-of-life improvements and smaller fixes that contribute to a smoother, more reliable authoring experience. As always, the detailed release notes below list all the changes included in this version. 🚀 Download HelpNDoc 10.6 and Try the Latest Improvements HelpNDoc 10.6 is available for free for personal use and evaluation, and can be downloaded today. HelpNDoc 10.6 focuses on practical improvements for everyday documentation work: more capable AI project tools, more flexible conditional content, better topic editor workflows, new code generation options for developers, faster Markdown output, and a series of reliability and performance enhancements. 👉 Download HelpNDoc 10.6 to try the latest version and explore these improvements in your own projects. Want to create great documentation? HelpNDoc is free, fully functional, and easy to use. Produce your first multi-format documentation in the next minute or so. Download HelpNDoc › Change log Version 10.6.0.365 – Release date: May 26, 2026 New AI tools for reorganizing topic and keyword trees, listing selected topics, managing topic statuses and build tags, and getting/updating topic properties (icons, aliases, help IDs) plus headers and footers Added support for converting text to tables with customizable delimiters Conditional content generation now allows conditions to be nested within other conditions, enabling nested conditional statements within parent statements Library items copied from topic editor content can now be pasted directly into the library of another HelpNDoc project Added the ability to modify existing conditional items by double-clicking them in the topic editor Added support for generating strongly typed TypeScript code for topic Help IDs and Help context numbers using Const Object, Enum, Map, and Object Constants templates Added Java templates for exporting topic Help IDs and Help context numbers as strongly typed code, including Constant, Enum, Map, Object Constant, and Interface formats Added Kotlin code generation templates (Constant, Enum, Map, and Object Constant) for exporting topic Help IDs and Help context numbers as strongly typed Kotlin code "Paste Special" now preserves PNG and SVG formats instead of converting them to bitmap images, retaining features such as transparency and vector graphics Markdown documentation generation has been significantly optimized, delivering over 5x faster generation speeds for large projects Fixed a Markdown documentation generation issue causing counters to reset per topic instead of incrementing project-wide Fixed an issue where upgrading older projects could cause custom equations and settings to be replaced with default equations Fixed an issue where lines beginning with discarded conditional content could be incorrectly exported onto the previous line Greatly improved how PNG and SVG images are copied from the topic editor to the clipboard, allowing compatible software to retain format specific features such as transparency and vector graphics Reworked internal connection handling for project files to improve speed and memory efficiency, especially when working with multiple projects in a single session Resolved an issue where memory was not properly released after project file migrations, decreasing long-term memory consumption Enhanced the underlying script engine to improve stability, performance, and security Improved the caching logic for library items to speed up processing and lower memory usage, especially when items are updated or removed Improved reliability and performance of conditional content rendering in the topic editor

Posted on: 25 May 2026 | 7:00 pm

ePub vs PDF: Choosing the Right Format for Your Content

The format you choose for your content, whether it’s a user manual, training guide, course workbook, nonfiction book, or internal company documentation, has a direct impact on how people read and use it. Two popular formats, PDF and ePub, seem similar at first glance because they both let you package and distribute written material. In practice, however, they offer very different reading experiences. PDFs are fixed, precise, and professional, while ePubs are flexible, lightweight, and comfortable on many devices. One is ideal when layout matters. The other shines when readability and portability matter most. So, which one should you choose? The answer depends on your audience, your content, and how your readers expect to use it. With HelpNDoc, though, you may not need to choose at all. 📄 PDF: Stable, Professional, and Print-Ready PDF is often the first format people think of when they need to share a finished document, because it preserves layout, formatting, and visual structure with precision. Because PDFs preserve the page exactly as designed, they are an excellent choice for content that must look the same everywhere. Printed manuals, professional reports, training handouts, reference guides, and formal documents can all benefit from PDF’s fixed layout. PDFs are also familiar. Most users already know how to open, print, save, and share PDF files. For businesses, educators, trainers, and authors, this reliability is a major advantage. A PDF feels like a final, polished publication. This format is especially useful when readers need to print the content, archive it, cite page numbers, or review a document exactly as it was designed. ⚠️ Where PDFs Can Be Less Convenient PDF’s greatest strength can also become its main limitation. Because the page layout is fixed, PDF documents do not always adapt well to smaller screens. On a phone or small tablet, for example, readers may need to zoom in, scroll sideways, or reposition the page constantly. This can make long reading sessions uncomfortable, especially for books, tutorials, course material, or guides meant to be read continuously. PDFs are also less flexible when readers want to adjust the font size or personalize the reading experience. The document retains its original design, which is ideal for visual control but not necessarily for accessibility or reading comfort. In short, PDFs are excellent when you want control over presentation. However, they are less ideal when you want the content to adapt to the reader. 📖 ePub: Flexible, Lightweight, and Reader-Friendly ePub was designed for digital reading. Rather than preserving a fixed page layout, it allows the content to reflow based on the reader’s device, screen size, and preferences. Its ability to adapt to different screens and reading preferences makes ePub particularly useful for books, learning materials, tutorials, educational content, onboarding guides, and long-form documents. Readers can increase the font size, adjust the spacing, and change the display settings to read comfortably on phones, tablets, and eReaders. This is a major benefit for teachers, trainers, authors, students, and content creators. ePub makes content feel less like a static document and more like a digital book that adapts to the reader. It is also lightweight and portable, making it practical for distributing large amounts of reading material without forcing users to deal with heavy, print-oriented files. ⚠️ Where ePub Can Be Less Suitable Because ePub adapts to the reading device, it does not offer the same level of layout control as PDF. That flexibility is usually an advantage, but it can create problems for certain types of content. Complex tables, large diagrams, heavily designed pages, precise page references, and documents that rely on exact positioning may not translate as predictably to ePub. Additionally, different ePub readers can display the same file slightly differently. This does not make ePub a weaker format. It simply means that it is built for a different purpose: ePub is best when the reading experience matters more than exact page design. 🧭 Choosing Between PDF and ePub The best format depends on how your audience will use the content. Use PDF when you need a polished document that can be printed, archived, reviewed, or shared exactly as designed. It is ideal for manuals, reports, official guides, reference documents, and any content where layout precision matters. Use ePub when your readers are more likely to consume the content on phones, tablets, or eReaders. It is ideal for books, tutorials, course material, learning guides, and long-form content that should remain comfortable to read across different screen sizes. In many cases, both formats are useful. For example, a teacher might provide a PDF workbook for printing and an ePub version for reading on tablets. A business might publish a PDF user manual for support teams and an ePub guide for customers who prefer mobile reading. An author might distribute a print-ready PDF alongside an eBook version. The real question is not always “PDF or ePub?” It is often “Which format does each reader need?” 🚀 With HelpNDoc, You Can Generate Both HelpNDoc eliminates the need to maintain separate projects for different formats. Rather than maintaining separate projects for each format, HelpNDoc lets you write and organize your content once, then generate multiple outputs from the same source project. These include PDF, ePub, CHM, HTML, Word, Kindle, Qt Help, and Markdown. This single-source approach saves time and reduces errors. When you update a topic, correct a typo, add an image, or reorganize your content, you only have to do it once. HelpNDoc can then regenerate the formats you need from that same project. Even better, HelpNDoc includes a template engine for every supported output format. That means you can customize the appearance and behavior of your PDF output separately from your ePub output, while still keeping the actual content centralized. You can create a precise, print-ready PDF for users who need structure and permanence, and a flexible ePub version for readers who want comfort and portability. Both come from the same project. Both stay consistent. Each serves a different reading need. ✅ The Best Format Is the One That Serves the Reader PDF and ePub are not competing formats. They are complementary publishing options. PDF provides readers with a stable, professional document that can be printed, archived, and referenced, while ePub offers a flexible, comfortable reading experience on phones, tablets, and eReaders. For writers, teachers, trainers, content authors, businesses, and documentation teams, the smartest strategy is often to provide both formats. With HelpNDoc, you do not need to duplicate your work or maintain separate versions of the same content. Create your project once, customize each output with templates, and generate PDF and ePub versions whenever you need them. Ready to try it yourself? Download HelpNDoc for free today and start publishing your content in multiple formats from a single source project. Want to create great documentation? HelpNDoc is free, fully functional, and easy to use. Produce your first multi-format documentation in the next minute or so. Download HelpNDoc ›

Posted on: 11 May 2026 | 7:00 pm

Migrate from RoboHelp and Maintain Consistent Documentation with Styled Snippets in HelpNDoc 10.5

We are excited to introduce HelpNDoc 10.5, a release focused on consistency, migration, and everyday productivity improvements. This update enhances how reusable content integrates within your projects, simplifies the transition from legacy tools such as Adobe RoboHelp, and delivers a wide range of fixes and refinements to make your documentation workflow smoother and more reliable than ever. Highlights of this release include styled snippets for consistent content reuse, a new RoboHelp project importer, improved HTML search accuracy, and multiple workflow and stability enhancements. As always, HelpNDoc is free for personal use and evaluation, so you can download the latest version and explore all these improvements firsthand. 🎨 Styled Snippets: Consistent, Reusable Content That Adapts to Your Project Snippets become even more powerful with full style support, ensuring perfectly consistent reusable content across your entire documentation. Snippets have long been a cornerstone of efficient content reuse in HelpNDoc, allowing you to define shared blocks of content — such as notes, warnings, or standard procedures — and reuse them across multiple topics. With HelpNDoc 10.5, snippets now support text and paragraph styles directly within their content. More importantly, these styles are not static: they are automatically merged with your project’s global styles at generation time. This ensures that every snippet seamlessly integrates into the final output, regardless of the target format or template. For instance, you can create a reusable “Warning” snippet with a specific paragraph style. When inserted across dozens of topics, it will automatically match your project’s visual identity (whether you generate HTML, PDF, or Word documentation) without requiring any manual adjustments. Whether you’re building large technical manuals, software documentation, or knowledge bases, styled snippets ensure that reusability never compromises consistency. 🔄 Seamless Migration from RoboHelp: Import Legacy and Modern Projects Easily migrate your existing documentation with full support for Adobe RoboHelp projects, both modern and legacy formats. HelpNDoc 10.5 introduces a powerful new importer for Adobe RoboHelp projects, supporting both the modern .rhpj and legacy .xpj formats. This makes it easier than ever to transition your documentation to HelpNDoc without losing structure or valuable reusable content. The importer can handle one or more tables of contents, and can optionally include keywords, variables, and snippets, ensuring that your project’s structure and reusable content are preserved during migration. This feature is particularly valuable for teams looking to modernize their documentation workflows. Rather than rebuilding projects from scratch, you can import them into HelpNDoc and immediately benefit from its advanced capabilities, including multi-format publishing, powerful templates, scripting automation, project analysis tools, and AI-assisted workflows. With this addition, HelpNDoc becomes an even more compelling solution for organizations and technical writers seeking to future-proof their documentation while preserving their existing investments. 🔍 Smarter Search and More Reliable HTML Importing Search accuracy and HTML import reliability have been improved, delivering a better experience for both authors and end users. Following the introduction of a completely rewritten HTML search engine in version 10.4, HelpNDoc 10.5 refines the experience by updating the search result highlighter to fully match the new engine’s behavior. Highlighted terms in generated HTML documentation now align with advanced query syntax, including required terms, exclusions, and exact matches. This helps end users quickly understand why a topic appears in search results, improving navigation and trust in the documentation. Additionally, the HTML importer has been enhanced to better handle malformed or imperfect HTML code, using parsing logic closer to modern web browsers. Table alignment handling has also been improved, resulting in cleaner and more accurate imported content. This means cleaner imports, fewer surprises, and less time spent fixing formatting before your documentation is ready to publish. ⚙️ Faster Authoring and Smarter Editing Workflows Everyday editing tasks are faster and more intuitive thanks to improvements in table handling and topic management. HelpNDoc 10.5 introduces practical enhancements that make everyday content editing easier and more efficient. Working with tables is now more intuitive thanks to the ability to reorder columns by moving them left or right, complementing existing row manipulation features. This makes it easy to adjust table layouts without having to rebuild them, especially when working with structured or imported content. Managing multiple topics has also been improved: updating topic descriptions and statuses now correctly applies changes to all selected topics, making bulk updates faster and more reliable. The Table of Contents display has also been refined by right-aligning status icons to ensure consistent alignment and improve readability when navigating large projects. These improvements help you work faster, reduce repetitive actions, and maintain better control over your content structure. 🛠️ Improved Reliability, Automation, and Application Stability Enhancements across the application improve stability, simplify deployment, and make advanced workflows more reliable. HelpNDoc 10.5 also delivers a range of improvements focused on reliability and automation. In enterprise environments, the new floatserver command-line option makes it easier to configure floating license servers. Administrators can retrieve server information and set the address and port directly via scripts, enabling automated deployments and simplified configuration. The scripting engine has also been improved by fixing issues with incorrectly registered API objects and methods, resulting in a more stable and predictable automation environment. Several usability and interface fixes further improve day-to-day reliability. These include better handling of Open and Save dialogs, improved compatibility with third-party overlay icons, and a fix for window resizing on high-DPI displays. Additionally, the “Mobile App” starter kit now generates the correct project structure, helping new projects start with a more appropriate foundation. Together, these changes ensure a more stable, reliable, and easier-to-manage documentation environment, whether you’re working alone or as part of a larger team. 🚀 A More Consistent, Reliable, and Scalable Authoring Experience HelpNDoc 10.5 strengthens the foundation of your documentation workflow with greater consistency, smoother migration, and enhanced reliability. This release focuses on what matters most for professional documentation: consistency, efficiency, and trust in your tools. HelpNDoc 10.5 delivers meaningful improvements across the entire authoring experience, from styled snippets that enable seamless content reuse to powerful import capabilities that simplify migration to numerous fixes that improve stability and usability. Whether you’re managing large documentation sets, migrating legacy projects, or refining your daily workflow, this version helps you work faster, more consistently, and with greater confidence. 👉 Download HelpNDoc 10.5 today and experience a more streamlined, scalable, and future-proof approach to technical documentation. Want to create great documentation? HelpNDoc is free, fully functional, and easy to use. Produce your first multi-format documentation in the next minute or so. Download HelpNDoc › Change log Version 10.5.0.323 – Release date: Apr 14, 2026 Snippets now support styles, which are merged with global project styles at generation time for consistent output Added a RoboHelp project importer for both modern (.rhpj) and legacy (.xpj) formats, enabling import of one or multiple tables of contents, with optional support for keywords, variables, and snippets Added support for reordering table columns by moving them left or right, similar to row reordering Added a new floatserver command for floating license models to retrieve server information and configure its address and port Improved Table of Contents readability by right-aligning topic status icons rather than inserting them before the topic icon, keeping topic icons consistently aligned Rewrote the HTML search-engine result highlighter to correctly process newer query syntax, including required terms, excluded terms, and exact matches Fixed multi-select updates for topic description and status so changes apply to all selected topics, not just the focused one Improved HTML importing to handle formatting errors gracefully and maintain correct table alignment The "Mobile app" system starter kit was not functioning correctly as it generated the same table of contents as the "API documentation" system starter kit, instead of a mobile-specific structure Fixed issues in script registration where some internal objects, methods, or properties had incorrect names or types, which could lead to unidentified script errors Fixed an issue where the form's resize area could appear too small on systems using display scaling above 100% Resolved an issue where showing hints or overlay icons in open and save file dialogs could cause access violations or other unexpected errors

Posted on: 13 April 2026 | 7:00 pm

Write Smarter, Not Harder: Discover HelpNDoc's Built-in AI Assistant

Technical documentation has always been a balance between precision, clarity, and time. Writing high-quality help files requires a deep technical understanding, structured thinking, and constant refinement. While no tool can replace the expertise of a skilled technical writer, the right assistant can make the process faster, smoother, and more efficient. What if you had a smart companion working alongside you, helping you write, organize, and improve your content in real time? With HelpNDoc’s built-in AI Assistant, that’s exactly what you get. 🤖 Meet Your New Writing Partner HelpNDoc’s AI Assistant is more than just a text generator: it’s a fully integrated, context-aware companion designed specifically for technical writers. HelpNDoc’s AI Assistant brings the power of artificial intelligence directly into your daily writing workflow through a built-in chat window that is always available within your project. Instead of switching between tools, searching the web, or juggling multiple applications, you can research ideas, draft content, and refine your documentation without ever leaving HelpNDoc. Need inspiration for a new section? Ask the AI to suggest an outline. Stuck on a complex explanation? Have it rephrase or simplify it. Working with existing content? Instantly fix grammar errors, improve clarity, and adapt the tone to match your audience. Need to prepare international documentation? Translate your topics in seconds, right where you write them. Since the AI Assistant is tightly integrated with HelpNDoc, it can work with your current topic, selected content, and overall project context. You can generate text and immediately insert or replace it in your editor, turning ideas into polished documentation in just a few clicks. The result is a smoother, more focused workflow in which technical writers spend less time switching tools and more time creating consistent, high-quality documentation. 🛠 From Conversation to Action: AI That Uses Your Project The real power of HelpNDoc’s AI Assistant lies in its ability to act on your project, not just talk about it. The AI Assistant can do more than generate text; it’s deeply connected to your HelpNDoc project and can interact directly with its structure. It doesn’t just produce generic answers: it can read your topics, understand your table of contents, and work with your existing content, allowing it to provide accurate, context-aware assistance instead of disconnected or approximate suggestions or hallucinations. This tight integration changes your day-to-day workflow. Rather than describing your documentation in abstract terms, you can simply instruct the Assistant to act on what already exists. For example, you might ask: “Analyze my table of contents and suggest missing sections for a complete user guide.” “Review the current topic and rewrite it for beginners with clearer steps.” “Based on this content, suggest and create relevant keywords to improve searchability.” Because the AI can access your project’s real data, its suggestions are grounded in your documentation, reducing guesswork and helping avoid the kind of generic or inaccurate responses often associated with external tools. It can also take action when needed. For example, if you ask it to create a new “Troubleshooting” section under a specific topic, it can generate the content and insert it directly into your project. If your keyword index is incomplete, the AI can identify gaps, create new keywords, and associate them with the right topics. Over time, the Assistant becomes more than just a writing aid: it becomes a practical tool for maintaining structure, consistency, and discoverability across your documentation. In its most advanced form, the AI Assistant evolves into an active project companion, capable of reorganizing sections, improving classification, and helping you scale large documentation projects without losing coherence. You remain in control at every step, guiding decisions and validating results, while the assistant handles the repetitive and time-consuming tasks that would otherwise slow you down. ✍️ A Smarter, More Fluid Documentation Workflow From first draft to final structure, the AI Assistant helps technical writers stay focused, efficient, and in control. HelpNDoc has always been designed to make documentation easier to create and maintain. The AI Assistant takes this a step further by supporting every stage of the writing process, not as a replacement for the writer, but as a constant, reliable companion that removes friction from everyday tasks. When starting from scratch, the AI Assistant helps you move faster by turning rough ideas into structured outlines or fully written sections. When refining existing content, it improves clarity, consistency, and tone, ensuring that your documentation remains professional and easy to understand. And when dealing with complex technical concepts, it can rephrase or simplify explanations so they better match your audience’s level of expertise. Because the AI Assistant is always available within your project, the AI Assistant also makes iteration effortless. You can continuously adjust, expand, and improve your documentation without breaking your flow or leaving your writing environment. Whether you are polishing a single topic or maintaining a large documentation set, it helps you keep everything aligned, coherent, and up to date. Over time, this creates a more natural and efficient workflow. Ideas turn into content faster, revisions become easier, and your documentation evolves more smoothly. The technical writer remains at the center of the process, making decisions and shaping the content, while the AI Assistant handles the repetitive, time-consuming work that would otherwise slow things down. 🚀 The Future of Technical Writing, Today HelpNDoc’s AI Assistant transforms documentation from a manual process into a collaborative, intelligent workflow. By combining a conversational interface with deep integration into your documentation project, HelpNDoc offers something truly distinctive: an assistant that doesn’t just generate text, but actively works with your content, your structure, and your workflow. Whether you’re drafting new topics, refining existing material, or organizing a complex documentation system, the AI Assistant helps you work faster while maintaining control over quality and consistency. It supports your expertise rather than replacing it, allowing you to focus on what matters most: delivering clear, accurate, and useful information to your users. And because it is entirely optional and disabled by default, you remain fully in control of when and how it is used. 👉 Download HelpNDoc for free and see how an integrated AI Assistant can transform the way you create and maintain documentation. Want to create great documentation? HelpNDoc is free, fully functional, and easy to use. Produce your first multi-format documentation in the next minute or so. Download HelpNDoc ›

Posted on: 26 March 2026 | 7:00 pm

Copy & Paste Library Items and Powerful HTML Search Improvements Arrive in HelpNDoc 10.4

We’re thrilled to announce the release of HelpNDoc 10.4! This productivity-focused update introduces long-awaited workflow enhancements, significant improvements to the built-in HTML search engine, and a variety of refinements across the application. From the new ability to copy and paste library items across projects, to faster and more consistent end-user search results, improved documentation output, and numerous UI and editor fixes, this version delivers meaningful gains for technical writers working on projects of all sizes. As always, HelpNDoc is free for personal use and evaluation, so now is the perfect time to download the latest version and experience these enhancements for yourself. 📚 Copy and Paste Library Items Across and Within Projects for Faster Content Reuse HelpNDoc 10.4 finally introduces powerful copy-and-paste operations for library items, making content reuse faster, safer, and dramatically more flexible. Library items are at the heart of how HelpNDoc helps you maintain consistent, reusable content. They include all shared media and dynamic elements such as pictures, documents, snippets, dynamic content, equations, image maps, videos, barcodes, raw HTML blocks, variables, counters, and organizational folders. Once placed in topics, library items are centrally managed. Update them once, and they’re updated everywhere they’re used. Previously, library items could be imported from other projects, but they could not be directly copied and pasted. HelpNDoc 10.4 removes this limitation entirely. You can now copy and paste individual library items, multiple selected items, or entire folders recursively, including all nested content. These operations work seamlessly both within the same project and across different projects, making it easy to reuse approved media, share standardized snippets, and migrate content without duplication. Behind the scenes, HelpNDoc uses highly optimized algorithms designed to handle very large libraries efficiently. Even complex, asset-heavy projects benefit from excellent performance, ensuring that copying and pasting remains fast and reliable regardless of scale. 🔍 A Much Smarter and Faster Built-In HTML Search Engine for End-User Documentation The default HTML documentation template now features a significantly more powerful, faster, and more consistent search engine, while remaining lightweight and fully client-side. HelpNDoc’s HTML output has always included a custom JavaScript search engine designed to be extremely fast and compact, running entirely in the end user’s browser without relying on server-side technology. This approach keeps downloads small and ensures excellent performance, even on limited hardware. With HelpNDoc 10.4, that search engine takes a major step forward. It now supports true AND searches by allowing required terms to be prefixed with a plus sign, and it introduces exact full-word matching using quoted phrases. An optional template setting also enables accent-insensitive searches, allowing users to find accented words even when entering unaccented queries. Performance has been significantly improved thanks to internal preprocessing and scoring optimizations, making repeated and complex searches noticeably faster. Repeated required terms are now handled correctly and behave predictably. Search results with identical scores are displayed in a stable, consistent order across runs. Numerous edge-case filtering and exclusion bugs have also been resolved. These improvements make the built-in HTML search far more powerful and reliable for real-world documentation, while preserving its key advantages: lightweight delivery, offline usability, and effortless deployment. 🌐 Improved HTML and Markdown Documentation Generation with Better Accessibility and Reliability HelpNDoc 10.4 improves the quality of documentation output with accessibility enhancements, usability fixes, and safer HTML generation, and a key Markdown correction. HTML documentation generation has received several important upgrades in this release, particularly around accessibility and usability. Keyboard navigation has been refined throughout the interface, including smoother navigation within tree controls and clearer focus behavior. Screen-reader support has been improved, and when users navigate search results via the keyboard, the first valid result now receives focus correctly. These enhancements make generated documentation easier to use for people with disabilities and also contribute positively to SEO, helping HTML output perform better in search engines such as Google. At the same time, the underlying JavaScript library used by the default HTML template has been strengthened to safely handle edge cases in both default and custom templates, preventing interface malfunctions for end users. Additionally, Markdown generation has been updated so that topics marked as hidden in the table of contents are excluded from exported Markdown tables of contents. This ensures that the exported structure accurately reflects the project’s visibility settings. 🧭 UI Enhancements, Equation Editor Improvements, and Important Bug Fixes HelpNDoc 10.4 delivers a variety of quality-of-life UI improvements, upgrades to the equation editor, and fixes to improve the robustness of the application. Several everyday workflows have been refined to make authoring faster and clearer. The auto-completion dialog used to insert hyperlinks to other topics now displays breadcrumb hierarchy hints when hovering over topics, making it easier to distinguish between items with identical or similar names. Reference library items have also been improved: hovering over them now displays the user-defined output formats for both HTML- and report-based documentation, providing immediate feedback on how references will render. The built-in equation editor has been significantly upgraded, offering faster performance, enhanced accessibility, and a more robust LaTeX and scientific notation parser with automatic formatting. Numerous bugs in the editor have been fixed as part of this update. Beyond editing tools, HelpNDoc 10.4 improves overall robustness by correcting the behavior of open and save file dialogs, which could previously trigger access violation errors on some systems. The topic editor’s hint system has also been fixed to better handle edge cases where hints could appear without content. 🚀 Download HelpNDoc 10.4 Today and Work Faster with Smarter Tools HelpNDoc 10.4 is available for free for personal use and evaluation — download it today and discover how much time you can save. Whether you’re reusing content across projects with the new library copy-and-paste, delivering better end-user experiences with the improved HTML search engine, or benefiting from accessibility and UI enhancements, HelpNDoc 10.4 is designed to make professional documentation faster, clearer, and more reliable. 👉 Download HelpNDoc 10.4 now and experience the improvements firsthand. Want to create great documentation? HelpNDoc is free, fully functional, and easy to use. Produce your first multi-format documentation in the next minute or so. Download HelpNDoc › Change log Version 10.4.0.281 – Release date: Mar 3, 2026 New copy and paste operations for library items, supporting both within-project and cross-project use, and optimized for large libraries Added true AND support for required terms (+word) and full quoted-word matching in the default HTML template's built-in search engine, and fixed several edge-case filtering and exclusion bugs Added optional accent-insensitive search to the default HTML template, allowing unaccented queries to match accented words Added breadcrumb hierarchy hints to the auto-completion dialog: hovering over a topic now reveals its full path to help differentiate similar items Hovering over a Reference now displays content from both its HTML and Report formats Equation editor improvements: Faster performance, enhanced accessibility, improved scientific-notation handling with auto-formatting, plus multiple bug fixes Fixed an issue where hidden topics in the table of contents were still included in the exported Markdown table of contents Resolved an issue causing HTML documentation anchor links to scroll to the wrong position after page load in some cases Improved accessibility in the default HTML template by correcting ARIA keyboard navigation so the first valid search result receives focus when the user tabs into the results HTML search engine performance has been enhanced through internal preprocessing and scoring optimizations, making repeated and complex queries noticeably faster HTML search engine now handles repeated required words correctly: entering the same +required term multiple times behaves like a single requirement and no longer changes filtering or ranking HTML search engine with equal-score search results now use a stable topic order, giving consistent and predictable result lists across runs Improved usability and accessibility of the HTML template's tree controls, including smoother keyboard navigation, clearer focus behaviour, and better screen-reader support Corrected the behavior of open/save file dialogs that could lead to Access Violation errors under certain environments Hardened the HTML template JavaScript library to safely handle edge cases in both default and custom templates Resolved a bug that caused some hints to render without content in the topic editor

Posted on: 2 March 2026 | 6:00 pm

Library Item Overrides: One Project, Tailored Content for Every Build

Keeping multiple versions of the same documentation can get messy fast. A “Standard” manual and an “Enterprise” manual often share 95% of the same topics, yet small differences (extra sections, different screenshots, client branding, regional settings) can force teams into duplicated projects and duplicated maintenance. Library Item Overrides solve that problem by letting you keep a single HelpNDoc project while generating multiple build variations. Instead of copying topics or maintaining forks, you override only the library items that need to change (images, documents, snippets, variables, barcodes/QR codes, equations, HTML code, and more). HelpNDoc then swaps those items automatically when you generate a specific build, so the right audience gets the right content without rewriting your topics. 🔀 One Library, Multiple Personalized Outputs Library item overrides give you the flexibility to adapt shared content for different builds without changing your topics or duplicating your project. HelpNDoc’s Library acts as a single source of truth for reusable content that can be inserted into any number of topics: images, snippets, variables, documents, and more. When you update a library item, every instance across your project updates automatically, ensuring consistency without repetitive edits. And because overrides are configured per build, you can replace that same item with an alternate version for a specific output only, instantly changing all occurrences in that build while keeping the original content untouched everywhere else. For example, imagine some topics use a single library image called ProductLogo. For a white-label edition, you don’t need to edit topics or hunt down occurrences. You simply override ProductLogo in the build settings so that: the “Client A” build uses Client A’s logo, the “Client B” build uses Client B’s logo, and your default build keeps your original logo. The topics remain identical. Only the build output changes. This approach works just as well for technical content. You can keep one set of steps, but override specific items per output, such as an ApiEndpoint variable, an AuthenticationSnippet snippet, or a ConfigFile document, so the generated documentation matches the target environment or edition. 🧩 Where Overrides Shine in Real Projects From platform-specific screenshots to branded client editions, overrides help you handle real-world documentation variations while keeping everything centralized. Overrides are most useful when the structure stays the same, but some pieces must change. A few common scenarios: Platform-specific documentation (Windows/macOS/Linux): Keep your topics stable, and override screenshot and icon library items so each build shows the correct UI. Standard vs. Enterprise feature differences: Use overrides for the parts that genuinely differ (feature tables, screenshots, “Getting Started” snippets, downloadable documents) while the shared content stays single-sourced. Branding and client-specific editions: Override logos, product names (via variables), support links, and even embedded “Legal” documents for each client’s deliverable. Regional variants: Override variables or snippets that control units (metric/imperial), example addresses, regulatory text, or localized URLs. ⚙️ How to Configure Library Item Overrides Setting up overrides is straightforward: each build can define alternate versions of library items that HelpNDoc applies automatically during generation. Overrides are configured per build in the Generate Documentation window: open Generate Documentation, select the build you want to customize, click Customize (if the build customization tabs aren’t visible yet), then go to the Library overrides tab. From there, you choose which library items should be overridden for that build and define their overridden content or properties. The exact override options depend on the library item type. For a picture, you typically point the override to a different image. For a variable, you override its value. For a snippet or document, you provide an alternate version that HelpNDoc will use during generation. 📚 A Simple Pattern That Scales Choose clear, future-proof library item names and rely on reusable library items (such as variables, documents, and snippets) instead of hard-coded text so your content remains flexible and easy to override. A scalable override strategy starts with how you name and use your library items. Instead of writing fixed values directly in topics, create meaningful items whose names describe their purpose rather than a specific build. Names like ProductName, DistanceUnit, InstallStepsSnippet, or ReleaseNotesDocument make it obvious that these elements may vary between outputs while remaining consistent across the project. Whenever possible, use variables for terminology or values, snippets for reusable paragraphs or technical steps, and documents for larger reusable content rather than embedding text directly into topics. Pictures are automatically stored as library items when inserted, which means they already benefit from overrides without additional setup. By relying on these reusable elements, you ensure that future build-specific changes happen in one place instead of scattered across multiple topics. Over time, thoughtful naming and consistent use of real library items make overrides effortless. Writers focus on clear structure and reusable content, while builds handle the differences—allowing your documentation to grow without introducing duplicated text or fragile hard-coded content. ✅ Conclusion: Maximum Flexibility, Minimum Redundancy Library item overrides bring powerful single-sourcing capabilities to HelpNDoc, helping you deliver tailored outputs while keeping your documentation clean, consistent, and easy to manage. Library Item Overrides are a practical single-sourcing tool: they let you deliver tailored outputs from one HelpNDoc project, while keeping maintenance under control. You update shared content once, and the changes automatically appear in every build, unless a specific library item has been intentionally overridden for that output. And when you combine library overrides with other per-build customization tools (such as style or options overrides) and conditional generation, you can produce highly personalized documentation outputs without turning your project into a maze of duplicated topics. Want to create great documentation? HelpNDoc is free, fully functional, and easy to use. Produce your first multi-format documentation in the next minute or so. Download HelpNDoc ›

Posted on: 10 February 2026 | 6:00 pm