MadCap Doc-To-Help

What do you like best?

I like that I can work directly in Microsoft Word - a platform that everyone is familiar with - and easily turn that into HTML output.

What do you dislike?

Other than the ability to work directly in Word, Doc to Help is actually pretty confusing to use.

I dislike that there is a lot of set up on my end to actually get the .html output put online. When I purchased Doc to Help I was under the impression that the capability to publish online was built into the product with a push of the button. This is not the case. You have to have your web team set up a domain, FTP protocol, etc. in order to publish Doc to Help's output online.

Also, Doc to Help freezes on me about every 10 builds - like clockwork. It will freeze on 3% and I have to restart my entire computer to get it to work correctly again. This is quite annoying.

Also, while it is easy to use in Word, the formatting of the text and images gets messed up after publishing to HTML most of the time. It is very difficult to get the format to look exactly how I want it - Doc to Help always adds in extra tabs, spaces, and changes my font size, etc.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Definitely play with the trial a lot before purchasing. Make sure that you understand the limits of its capabilities.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Doc to Help solves my business' problem of needing a centralized place to find reference documents for all of our internal processes. Instead of distributing a 300-page long word document that outlines our processes, and having to send out revisions to everyone each time a change is made, I just provide everyone the URL that I post the HTML output to and any updates/changes I make are in real time. I don't have to worry about anybody not having the most up-to-date version of the document.