A Topic Type is a named collection of topic attributes: what window the Help topic appears in, how it's accessed, whether it gets a map number, where the heading paragraph appears, or if it appears at all. Topics are mapped to Topic Types by the style of their headings. Using Topic Types streamlines the customizing process for you, while Helping maintain consistency. There are two uses for topic types. First, you can use a Topic Type to customize an individual topic, overriding the style properties. Second, you can use a Topic Type to customize the default behavior of a paragraph style.

Note that Topic Types and Paragraph Styles have many duplicate properties. When a paragraph style has a TopicType associated with it, the duplicate Topic Type properties supercede the Paragraph Style properties.

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Topic Type Properties

Default Topic Types

Adding a New Topic Type

Editing Topic Type Properties

Applying Topic Types to Topics

Applying Topic Types to Paragraph Styles