How to customize the cover page in a PDF manual?

Is it possible to customize the cover page in the Printed Manual or PDF document generated by HelpSmith?

Front Page customization

By default, HelpSmith automatically generates the Front page, TOC page, and the Index page in printed documentation.

However, in the Printed Manual settings, you can specify a topic that will be displayed instead of the automatically generated Front Page.

In this case, you will be able to add texts, company logo, and other elements by editing the content of this special topic in the HelpSmith's word processor.

Below are the steps that you can follow to create a customized Front Page for your Printed Manual, PDF, of MS Word document.

Step 1. Add a topic that will be used as the Front Page

1. On the Project tab, in the Topics & Templates group, click Add.
2. In the New Item dialog, specify the Title (for example: Front Page), and Context value (for example: 2000) for the new topic.
3. Check the Hidden option, so the topic will not be displayed in the Table of Contents section in the generated document.
4. Click the Templates button, go to the Printed Manual tab, and uncheck the option Use template for this topic.
5. Click OK.

Step 2. Specify the topic in the Front Page's settings

1. On the Project tab, click Project Options.
2. In the Project Options window, go to the Printed Manual|Front Page section.
3. In the Type box, select Use help topic.
4. Select the topic that you want to display as the customized Front Page.
5. Click OK.

Sample help project

To demonstrate how you can customize the Front Page in your printed documentation, we have created a sample help project.

To download the sample help project:

• Click on the Attachments link below, and then click the Custom-Front-Page.zip file.