Creating Expanded, Drop-Down, or Popup Text

You can use three different methods to display information that is initially not displayed in your output:

  • Expanded Text This displays content immediately after a selected link.
  • Drop-Down Text This displays content under a selected link.
  • Popup Text This displays content in a popup window when the link is selected.
  1. In the Word source document, select the text you want to use as the link to open the hidden content.
  2. In the Doc-To-Help ribbon, click the Inline Text button. The Inline text dialog opens. The link text is displayed in the Selection area.
  3. In the Text box, enter the text to be displayed when the link is clicked in the output.
  4. In the Options section, choose one of the following, depending on the kind of feature you want to create:
    • Expand text inline
    • Dropdown text
    • Show text in a popup
  5. (Optional) If you would like the effect to be indicated as a comment in the source Word document, select Text in comment.
  6. Click OK.
  7. Doc-To-Help displays a message box informing you that this is an invisible style (meaning the expanded, drop-down, or popup text added will be not be displayed in the Word source document—or in the output until the link is clicked). Since that is acceptable, click No to close the message box. If you’d like to make this information visible, see Showing Hidden Hotspots.

Note In EPUB outputs, expanding and drop-down text may be displayed or hidden. The option you prefer can be set in the Help Targets dialog using the Show expanding text and Show dropdown text check boxes.

Note It is also possible to create expanding/collapsing sections in HTML Help, NetHelp, Microsoft Help Viewer, and Help 2.0 targets. See Creating Expanding/Collapsing Sections.