Basic Working Procedures > Creating Topic Files > Creating new topics in the TOC

You create a new topics in two places: In your project's Table of Contents (TOC) or the Project Files section. Creating a new topic in the TOC creates a TOC entry and a topic file and links the TOC entry to the topic file. Creating a new topic in Project Files creates a topic file without a TOC entry.

The instructions below explain how to create topics with TOC entries. See Creating new topics in Topic Files for instructions on creating topics without TOC entries.

Key Information

If you save in compressed single-file mode (.hmxz) all your topic files are stored inside your compressed project file and can only be viewed in the Project Explorer. The Standard version of Help & Manual can only save in compressed mode.

Normally, you will want your topic files to have entries in your Table of Contents (TOC). Topic files that you create in the TOC section of the Project Explorer automatically have TOC entries.

1.	Click in the TOC in the Project Explorer at the position where you want to add your new topic.

2.	Select Project > Add Topic and choose an Add Topic option OR

Right-click to display the context menu and then select an Add Topic option

3.	This displays the Insert New Topic dialog:

•	Select Topic/Chapter create a normal topic with content.

•	The Chapter without Text option creates a TOC entry that is only used as a chapter heading for a group of sub-topics.

•	Note that chapters with text are not supported in Winhelp. When you compile to Winhelp a sub-topic with the same name as the chapter with text will be generated containing the texts of the chapter.

4.	Type your title in the Topic Heading: field (this is the title that appears in the TOC). The Topic ID is generated automatically and is initially based on the caption you enter. You can edit the automatically-generated topic ID if you like – see Topic IDs and context numbers for more details.

See the Insert New Topic for details of the settings displayed by More . Note that you cannot select Popup as the Topic Class when you are adding topics to the TOC. Popups should not have TOC entries so you must create popup topics in the Topic Files section.

5.	Click on OK to create the topic.

Initially the header of the topic above the editing area will be identical to the caption. If you edit the caption in the TOC the header will change with the caption. However, if you edit the header this will turn off the "link" between the caption and the header. Any changes made to the caption after this will no longer be reflected in the header.

You can also create a new topic by dragging & dropping text to the Table of Contents (TOC), in the same way that you create hyperlinks:

1.	Select the text in a topic that you want to use for the topic caption.

2.	Drag the text into the TOC between two topics, in the position where you want the new topic to be inserted.

A blue line is displayed between the TOC entries in the position where the new topic will be inserted.

3.	Let go of the mouse button. A new topic will be created with the selected text as the caption.

1.	Proceed as described above for creating a new topic.

2.	In the Insert New Topic dialog select the Multiple Topics option.

3.	Enter captions in the Item Captions editing box. Use the indent tools on the right to indent captions, which makes them sub-topics of the topic above them. The button un-indents captions. You can also use the TAB key to indent entries to turn them into sub-topics.

4.	Click on OK to create the topics.

Note that when you use this method the topic IDs are all generated automatically from the topic captions. You can edit the IDs afterwards if you want.

You can use content templates for topics to automatically insert a basic layout, including any content (text, graphics, tables etc.) when you create a new topic. If you have already created one or more topic content templates in your project directory you can select them when you create the topic.

•	Click on More in the Insert New Topic dialog and select the template you want to use in the Topic Template: field.

•	Templates will only be defined if you have created them by saving topics in your project directory as XML template files, using the naming syntax topicname.template.xml, with the File > Save Topic to File in Project > Manage Topics.

See Content templates for topics for full details on creating and using topic content templates.