Frequently Asked Questions

RiverDocs Products

Can I change the colour of text in my converted document without changing the HTML code manually?

Yes. You can change text colour using the following steps:

If the Properties pane is not already open (to the right of the Editing pane that displays the converted document), open it by clicking the Properties button in the Editing toolbar.
Select the text you want to change. To select a short section, drag across it with the mouse. To select the entire text of the paragraph or heading, place your cursor anywhere within it. You can even change the colour of text across the entire body of the HTML page by going to the Path display at the foot of the Editing pane and clicking BODY.
Click the New Style button. The New Style dialogue box opens.
In the dialog box, click the pencil icon. The Color Chooser palette opens. Click the colour you want for your text and click Apply.
For accessibility, you need to set a contrasting background colour. Click the bucket icon and make a setting for the background colour, e.g. white, in the same way.
Click OK. The dialogue box will close, and your text will display with the new colour settings.

Notes:

If your changes do not display when you close the dialogue box, place the cursor inside the area that you selected, which will display the style name (e.g. .Style3) in the Formatting and style of selection drop-down list, click Edit, then without making any further changes click OK. The changes will be displayed.
Editing an existing style: Instead of creating a new style, you can change the text colour for any existing CSS style setting listed in the Formatting and style of selection drop-down list. If you see a style setting in the drop-down list when you click within the text you want to change, you can click the Edit button and make changes in the Edit Style dialogue box. However, these changes will affect the entire text area covered by the existing style, (e.g. one or more paragraphs) even if you only select part of that area with the mouse. For this reason, when changing a short portion of text it is usually easier to create a new style, which overrides any existing style.

Why have some groups of characters in my converted document been replaced by Xs, and some pages omitted at the end of the document?

This is because you have version 1.1 of RiverDocs Converter and are converting in evaluation mode, which imposes these restrictions. The trial version 2.0 is fully featured and only time-restricted, so RiverDocs recommends that you download version 2.0. If you have purchased version 1.1, you can obtain a free upgrade to 2.0 by contacting RiverDocs at support@riverdocs.com.

I do not have Microsoft .NET installed on my system, and I see that it is part of the RiverDocs Converter system requirements. How do I install it?

Go to Microsoft’s .NET download page at
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads
and click the Download button.
In the message box that displays, click Run to download the setup file, dotnetfx.exe.
Another message box displays – click Run again to install .NET 2.0.

When you open RiverDocs Converter it will run normally. Note that the Converter runs in evaluation mode until the licence file e-mailed to you from RiverDocs is applied.

When I publish my converted document it is saved as a group of linked HTML pages. Is it possible to publish the converted document as a single page?

Yes. Your current publishing mode is Section-based or Page-based. Before converting the document, click the Options button in the main toolbar, select Single file in the Publish mode drop-down list and click OK. When published, your document will now display in a browser as a single HTML page.

What is a River Web Document?

River Web Document is the term for the output of RiverDocs Document Converter in one of its available formats, i.e.

web-accessible HTML 4.01
XHTML 1.0

What is a web document?

A web document can be defined as a web page or collection of web pages that corresponds to a print document. Such a document may be used on the World Wide Web itself or on an intranet.

Can documents converted with RiverDocs Converter be read on all popular browsers?

Yes, and no additional plugin reader is required.

What document formats can RiverDocs Converter convert?

PDF, DOC, RTF (Rich Text Format)and OpenOffice ODT.

Is RiverDocs Converter fully automatic?

No, because although the conversion process is fully automatic, web accessibility compliance requires editing of residual issues in the content – for example, RiverDocs highlights tables that lack summary text describing the table’s purpose, a feature required by visually impaired users. RiverDocs saves you a lot of time by locating and listing these issues, and editing is easy to perform in the Editing pane.

Can RiverDocs Converter handle long documents?

Yes, the Converter can handle documents of any size, subject to the memory limitations of the system on which it is installed.

In what formats can the output of RiverDocs Converter be saved?

Output can be (X)HTML or CHM. In both formats, you can specify the level of accessibility for the output (WCAG A, AA) and whether to have it rendered as a single unbroken page, multiple pages as in the original or multiple pages defined by section headings in the document. You can also opt to use the autogenerated RiverDocs table of contents or import your own table of contents.

Does RiverDocs Converter save time?

Yes. It converts large documents and highlights any residual edits in a matter of seconds. To convert the same documents and locate and correct all the web accessibility issues by other means would be a predominantly manual process requiring multiple software applications and involving costs of the order of £50 per page.

Can I do batch conversion with RiverDocs Converter?

Not with this downloadable, desktop version, but customisation for batch conversion is available. For details, contact support@riverdocs.com.

Does RiverDocs Converter support the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) protocol?

Yes. The converted output incorporates a CSS document specification. RiverDocs Converter also has a built-in CSS editor that allows you to apply a formatting change throughout a document or to restrict it to one instance.

CSS is recommended by the W3C for facilitating implementation of web accessibility, as it reduces file sizes and provides convenient centralised control of the presentation of web sites and documents.

If you require your web documents to have a house format applied by an existing in-house CSS file, you can opt to import your CSS file when setting your RiverDocs Configuration options before conversion. Note however that such a house file should be used with care – for example, there may be rendering problems if it contains fonts specified with absolute sizes, as opposed to percentages.

Is RiverDocs Converter available for Apple Macintosh?

No.

Can converted HTML have the same security as a password-protected PDF?

PDF files are designed so they can be used independently after downloading. This means they are potentially vulnerable to being edited and misrepresented. Some authors use password protection to prevent editing of PDF files once they have been downloaded. The security of documents converted to accessible (X)HTML against being edited and misrepresented has a different basis – it lies in the security of its source website and its URL-based identity. Documents converted by RiverDocs will typically be as secure as any other page on the website to which they are published.

What are A, AA and AAA web accessibility levels, and can I choose between them when using RiverDocs Converter?

The owner of a web site can display a W3C logo that indicates the site’s level of compliance with the WCAG 1.0 guidelines. The triple-A logo indicates that the site conforms to Priority 1, 2 and 3 checkpoints, double-A that it conforms to 1 and 2 only, and A that it only conforms at the Priority 1 level. RiverDocs Converter allows you to preselect level A or AA when converting a document. Note that because some accessibility issues fall outside the scope of automatic processing, AA and AAA web accessibility levels both require human assessment of the converted document for full compliance. With RiverDocs Converter, you can carry out the necessary assessment and editing after the automatic phase of conversion using the editing tools.

RiverDocs Converter has inserted summaries automatically in some tables where they were missing, and in a few cases these are truncated or inappropriate - how can I fix this?

Make a note of the affected tables and run the document containing them through RiverDocs Converter again.
If you have not already done so, click the Properties button to open the HTML/CSS Editor
Locate each table with a defective summary and click it. You can select it quickly by clicking the table and selecting the TABLE element in the Path display at the foot of the Editing pane.
Click the Insert/Edit Table button. The Edit Table dialogue box is displayed.
Delete the unsuitable summary text in the Summary text box, and enter a suitable summary, i.e. a brief description of the purpose of the table.
Click OK to close the dialogue box.
If you need further help, click the Help button in the Converter Main screen, or contact RiverDocs support from www.riverdocs.com

My converted document contains a map with street names that came out as only a list of street names and no map. Small headings like “by Train” “by Bus” and “by Car” all ended up merged with the paragraph body. Can I correct this without changing the original document?

Yes. Vector images may cause problems where an image such as the map as in this example, or a logo, combines text with an image. In such cases, RiverDocs Converter may render the text but discard the graphic part. In much less time than it takes to describe, Screen capture allows you to take a snapshot of the complete item from the Original view and reinsert it, as follows:

Start with the Original, Editing and Properties panes open. If necessary, click the Original, Edit or Properties buttons to open them.
Delete the defective version of the image, leaving the cursor in place.
Click the Screen Capture button.
In the Original pane, click the page containing the item you want to capture, and drag downwards diagonally with the mouse from the top left corner of the item. A red rectangular border displays. When you have framed the item, release the mouse, and a translucent rectangle will cover the item. You can drag the lower right-hand corner of the rectangle to resize it, and also move it with the mouse.
When the framing is satisfactory, double-click the translucent rectangle or press Enter. The copied item is inserted in the Editing pane. You should now add an alt text to the new replacement image’s properties, for accessibility.
To give the new image an alt text, click the Insert/Edit Image button in the Editing toolbar. The Edit Image dialogue box is displayed, where you can enter an alt text for the image. Type a suitable alt text description of the image into the Alt Text box.
Click OK to close the dialogue box. You have replaced the image.

An image in my converted document has a shredded appearance – can I retrieve it?

Yes. Images that are authored by assembling fragments of other images may be rendered in this way – in the Original pane you can usually distinguish the divisions in the image as faint lines. To restore the image, use screen capture.

When I converted my document, some items that were not in boxes on the original appeared in boxes. Can I remove the boxes?

This requires a manual solution. Follow these steps to remove the box from an item:

In the Editing pane, select the affected text or other item and click the Cut button or press Ctrl+X to copy it to memory and remove it temporarily. The empty box should remain on screen.
Delete the empty box.
Ensure that your cursor is at the correct position for the start of the copied item.
Click the Paste button or press Ctrl+V to reinsert the copied item.

Some tables in my document have been converted as text – can I restore them to table format?

Yes, there are three options: Screen capture, inserting and populating a blank table and pasting from a temporary Word version of the table. If your original is an Excel table, go straight to the next question in this FAQ.
The quickest is to use the screen capture feature. The result of this is a faithful reproduction of your table, but in image format, and therefore the data, though readable in a browser, is not editable or accessible as text by screenreader software.

Inserting a blank table: With this method you insert a table and cut and paste the table text contents into the cells. This can be a longer operation and is not recommended for large tables. The steps are as follows:

If you have not already done so, click the Properties button to open the HTML/CSS Editing pane. (Note: If it is already open, clicking the button will close it!)
Place your cursor in the main Editing pane where you want the replacement table to be.
Click the Insert/Edit Table button. The Insert Table dialogue box will open – enter the number of columns and rows you require, and a Summary text for the table. Enter a Border value, e.g. 3 – the border can be dispensed with later, but makes the table visible for convenient editing.
Click OK to close the dialogue box. The table will be visible in the Editing pane, and if you select it, the interactive Path display will show the table element and its components like this (the exact display depends on where you place your cursor within the table):BODY >> TABLE >> TBODY >> TD >> TR
Cut and paste the table contents text from the Editing pane into the appropriate cells of the table until you have restored it. When pasting you can locate eachcell visually or use the Path display to locate the TD element for the relevant cell. Do not attempt to paste content from more than one cell at a time.

Pasting the table from a temporary Word document which you have converted, or (in version 2) directly from the Word document. This is a quick method of inserting an accessible HTML version of an Excel (or other) table. See the next question in this FAQ.

A Microsoft Excel table in my original document did not convert. I attempted to copy and paste it directly from Excel, but received an error message – can I restore my table?

Yes, you can do this in a couple of minutes. If the error message is still open, click Continue to close it. This method involves pasting the table into Word, then into RiverDocs Converter. The steps for restoring the Excel table are

Save your converted work document as a .riverdocs project file by clicking the Save button.*
Copy your table from Excel and paste it into a blank Word document.
Save the Word document.
Open it in the Converter, and convert it.
Copy the converted table by selecting it and clicking Ctrl+C.
Reopen your work document .riverdocs, and paste the table into its correct position.

This method produces an accessible HTML table without extraneous style data, which will publish with the rest of the document.
An even quicker variation of this method is to copy and paste the table into a Word document, then immediately copy and paste the resulting Word table into your RiverDocs document without putting it through the Converter – however, if you do this, the table's HTML code may include table layout data such as width and height of cells, rendering it less accessible.
*Alternatively, instead of saving your work as a .riverdocs file, you can keep it open, and open a second instance of the Converter to carry out steps 4 and 5.

I converted a Word document containing a table, and the table was missing from the converted version – how can include it?

You can use screen capture to copy and paste the table as follows:

Place your cursor in the Editing pane where you want the table to be.
Select the Table and text (flow) option in the Original toolbar
Click and drag the area of the table with the mouse so as to enclose it in the red rectangle that is displayed.
Release the mouse, and double-click the grey translucent rectangle that displays, or press Enter.
The table will display in the Editing pane.

Note: Sometimes tables in Word documents fail to convert because the entire table is enclosed in a text box. Check whether this is the case by opening the origianl document in Word and clicking the boundary of the table and seeing whether a box is displayed. If so, select the table carefully without selecting the text box – to do this, locate and click the table's object handle, which is a cross icon, at its top left-hand corner. This selects the whole table. Click Ctrl+C to copy it, and paste it into the Converter's Editing pane at the required location by clicking Ctrl+V.
Note: If you want to import an Excel table into your converted RiverDocs document, first paste or embed it in a Word document. (see previous question).

There are some headings in the RiverDocs table of contents (TOC) that are not in my original document. Why is this, and can I remove them?

When you click the TOC button, RiverDocs Document Converter generates a table of contents based on the headings in your document, and may also generate additional suggested headings. If you find that these headings are not useful, simply select them in the TOC view pane and delete the heading style in the CSS tabbed page.

Can I edit the table of contents generated by RiverDocs?

Yes, you can click the headings and type in new names. These edits will appear when you view the published TOC. However, you cannot reorder the heading hierarchy.

My page contained a form for entering address and other details, and these were compressed and incomplete in the converted document. A six-line address was compressed into two lines, boxes for ticking or entering a code or name were lost, etc. Can I remedy this?

RiverDocs Converter does not convert the form portion of documents, i.e. where users have entered, or can enter input in text boxes etc.. However, if you simply wish the current displayed version of the form to appear in the converted output, without being capable of receiving online input, you can use the screen capture feature to reproduce it as an image.

I can see from the display on the Issues button that my converted document has 7 accessibility Issues, but I can’t see the list of Issues. How do I display it?

Just click the Issues button, and the Accessibility Issues pane will open on the right-hand side of the screen, together with the HTML/CSS Editor tools.

What can I do in the Editing pane?

You can do the following editing operations with elements that you select in the Editing pane:

preview the converted output and view or edit its underlying HTML code by clicking the Source tab
select, delete and insert items, including those copied in the original document with the screen capture feature
reformat text using the Editing toolbar buttons, Format drop-down list and, by clicking the Properties button, the CSS editing tools
view and correct issues flagged in the Accessibility Issues pane
carry out necessary assessment of accessibility issues that fall outside the scope of automatic processing

When I try to make a single word or few words within a paragraph bold or italic using the New Style or Edit Style buttons, the whole paragraph changes, which I don’t want. Can I just change part of a paragraph?

Yes. Use the Editing toolbar for this kind of change, rather than the CSS settings. Select your text by dragging across it as you would do in a word processor, and click the Bold button to make it bold, the Italic button to italicise it, and so on. If you click the Source tab and look at the page code, you can see that these edits enclose your selected text in valid HTML formatting tags such as <strong> and <em>.
If you make a series of such changes using various buttons, you can undo them in sequence by clicking the Undo button.

Part of a paragraph in my converted document has an unwanted style – can I remove it?

Yes. The style can be deleted easily like any other CSS style. The quickest option is simply to place your cursor within the affected piece of text and click the CSS Editor's Delete button. When an alert box opens asking you to confirm or cancel your deletion of the style, click Yes.
If the style does not disappear, you need to overwrite it before deletion. Leave the cursor within the affected text and click the New Style button. When the New Style dialogue box opens, displaying a new added style name such as Style54, simply click OK – no need to edit the style. Then click the Delete button, and the style will be cleared.

I want to insert in my converted document an image that was not in my original document but is on my system. I clicked the Insert/Edit Image button and entered the image file's pathname (absolute URL) and an Alt text for the image in the Insert Image dialogue box, but on publishing the document, the Alt text was displayed instead of the image. How can I insert the image?

The Insert/Edit Image button is designed primarily to allow manipulation of the existing images in the document, but there is a workaround solution:

After converting the document, place the cursor at the desired insertion point for your image in the Editing pane.
Click the Insert/Edit Image button, and in the Insert Image dialogue box insert a URL in the following format:
images\filename (e.g. images\mountains.jpg)
Enter an Alt text for the image.
Click OK to close the dialogue box.
Publish the converted document.
Copy the image from your system and paste it into the Images folder of the published RiverDocs web document.
When you open the document in a browser, the image should now display correctly.

Can I insert text, tables or other images copied in other Windows applications such as Word into my converted document by pasting them directly into the Editing pane before using Save or Publish?

Yes. Results are good with Word files, including items pasted into Word, but may vary with other applications.
Text: You can paste text from Word directly. If the original formatting of the text disrupts the page, it is recommended that you paste your text into the Windows Notepad text editor before pasting it into RiverDocs Converter. This strips out any unwanted formatting information. To open Notepad, click Start - All Programs - Accessories - Notepad. Then click File - New and paste your text in the Notepad workspace. Select all the text and press Ctrl+C to copy it. Finally, place your cursor in the RiverDocs Converter Editing screen where you want to insert the text, and press Ctrl+V to paste it.
Images: You cannot insert images by pasting them directly, because although the Editing pane displays them after pasting, to be embedded in the page the image file needs to be located in the published HTML Images folder or its URL needs to be entered in code. However, you can insert an image at a cursor position by following a few simple steps as described above in the answer to the previous question.
Tables: Do not paste spreadsheet tables from Excel directly, but Word tables can be pasted, and by first pasting an Excel table into Word, you can then copy and paste it into the Converter. Alternatively, use the Converter's Insert/Edit Table button to insert a table of the required size, and transcribe or paste the data from your external table, which must be done cell by cell. Do not attempt to paste data from multiple cells. Note: When inserting a new table using the Insert Table dialogue box, for editing purposes the Converter sets a default border of 1 in the Border text box. This enables you to see the table clearly in the Editing pane. Later, you can change the border setting. If you want no border, do not leave the Border text box blank, but insert a zero. The table will then display with a faint dotted border, but will have no border when published.

After converting a document and inserting a hyperlink in selected text using the Insert/Edit link button, the hyperlink did not work.

You probably omitted the protocol prefix (usually http://) when typing the URL in the Link URL textbox. Your URL should start with a protocol such as http://, https:// or ftp, not with www. Do not surround it with quotes. By the way, if you wish you can correct the URL in the source code by inserting the missing portion.

After uninstalling RiverDocs Converter, I notice that a file called AU_.exe with the RiverDocs logo is present on my system in C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Temp\, in a folder called ~nsu.tmp. Should I delete it?

No, it is completely harmless and will be deleted automatically when you next reboot your PC. The folder will remain, but is also harmless. It can be deleted with no ill effects. This EXE file is a normal by-product of the uninstall process and is necessary to allow the deletion of the uninstall program's EXE file.

I was unable to complete installation of RiverDocs Converter, and received the error message "RiverDocs.exe - Unable to locate DLL". How can I find the requisite DLL file?

This is likely to happen if you do not have Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or later installed on your system, which is one of the system requirements for running RiverDocs Converter.
You can check your version of .NET Framework in Windows Explorer by browsing to or searching for the folder C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework. Inside you should have a set of folders with titles in the form v1.1.4322, etc.. Verify that the highest version is below v2.0.0000. If the version is below 2.0 or you do not have any version of Microsoft .NET installed on your system, go to Microsoft's .NET download page at
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads and click the Download button. In the message box that displays, click Run to download the setup file, dotnetfx.exe.
Another message box displays – click Run again to install .NET 2.0.

My original document contains text formatted in all capitals that has converted with mixed case. How can I remedy this?

RiverDocs Converter does not allow direct all-cap formatting, but there are are couple of workarounds for fixing this problem:

[1] Use Word formatting: A quick method you can use if you have Microsoft Word installed is to open a new, blank document in Word and copy and paste the mixed-case text from the Converter into the Word document.
Then format the text as all caps by selecting it and using the Word menu command Format - Font - All caps.
Finally, copy and paste the text back into the converted document.

[2] Alternatively, you can use CSS. Open your CSS file in Notepad and add the following style code (note the initial full stop) :
.uppercase {text-transform: uppercase}
Then return to your converted RiverDocs document and click the Source tab to display the page code.
Add the new style to the mixed-case text that you want to change by enclosing it in a style SPAN, as in this example, where the mixed-case text is "wARNinG: DanGerOus MATErIALs":
<span class="uppercase">wARNinG: DanGerOus MATErIALs</span>
When published, the text will now display as WARNING: DANGEROUS MATERIALS