Select "Tools | Conditions" to open the Conditions screen. Conditions affect your whole Project and allow you to insert blocks of text that may be included or excluded when you next compile. For example, let's say you wanted to provide a different phone number depending on the customer you are compiling the help file for. You could create two Conditions called "FIRST_CLASS" and "STANDARD". Then you could type in two phone numbers in your help text and surround one within the FIRST_CLASS Conditon and the other within the STANDARD Condition. Then if you check the FIRST_CLASS Condition, leaving the STANDARD Condition unchecked, and compile, your compiled help text will only show the FIRST_CLASS phone number and the STANDARD one will be excluded. To reverse this, simply check and uncheck the relevant Conditions and re-compile. I hope you are getting the idea of how powerful Conditions can be. Below is a tutorial for using a single Condition.

Step by Step Tutorial

A Condition can be described in the following context:-

"If BETA_VERSION is true then include the following text"

or, "If BETA_VERSION is false then do not include the following text"

Try the following example to see how Conditions could work for you:-

1. Click the [ADD] button and type in BETA_VERSION and click [OK]
2. You can set the Background color and the Font color if you like. This is useful to quickly distinguish between different Conditions. You can also add any notes in the Notes section. You can check the box beside your new condition, which means "Include this condition", or un-check it, which means "Exclude this Condition".
3. Now close the Conditions screen and in a test topic, add some text. Then select "Insert | Condition BEGIN IF". This is the beginning of your Condition. Select BETA_VERSION and click [OK].
4. Now type in some text like "can you see me?" and then select "Insert Condition END IF". You should now see the last part of your text enclosed in a BEGIN...END Condition block.
5. Now Compile your help file. Do you see your text? If you checked the Condition then you should see it.
6. Now select "Tools | Conditions" again, and this time un-check the BETA_VERSION Condition, click [OK] and Compile. Now the Condition text should be gone.

As you can no doubt now gather, this can be a very powerful feature. You can have as many Conditions as you like, but they cannot be nested, i.e. you cannot have one Condition within another.

Refresh All Pages

If you use Page Conditions then any changes to a Condition, i.e. checking or un-checking it, can affect pages within your Project. Clicking this button will search every Topic, Heading and Popup and update the Inclusion / Exclusion status of that page based on your changes.

See Also

Page Conditions