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We're using Sandcastle for conceptual documentation and have clients that we would like to give documentation to in a non-CHM or HTML form, i.e printed. It could be Word or PDF, something simple to attach to an email. The use case usually involves someone wanting to send along a topic.

The best we've been able to do is to print from the CHM viewer or to PDF from Chrome when viewing the HTML. These have issues in that they remove anchor element clicks, turn images black and white, etc.

There's a thread on the SHFB discussions on Codeplex stating that there isn't any known alternative - http://shfb.codeplex.com/discussions/260489. I'm re-posting the question here in hopes to get more input and visibility.

Rick Glos
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    I feel like I'm close but just missing a search term or something. Even the documentation on Wikipedia about [MAML](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Assistance_Markup_Language) states: `The presentation transformation enables content authored in MAML to use many different formats, including DHTML, XAML, RTF, and printed material.` – Rick Glos Sep 15 '11 at 21:30

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I had the same need some time ago and came to the conclusion that using a CHM to PDF converter is the best recourse. I could not find one that was open-source though many have trial versions available, and I only needed to convert one document so that served my needs at the time. Note that trial/demo versions typically add a watermark or a label blazoned across the page saying "unregistered version" or some such.

A general web search reveals quite a number of candidates: while I cannot vouch for any, here are a few that seem reputable: Universal Document Converter, Theta CHM To PDF Converter, Softany CHM to PDF Converter.

2014.07.16 Update Per @J0e3gan's comment, here is a different online converter (limited to 100MB CHM input) that looks quite promising, though I have not yet had occasion to try it.

Michael Sorens
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  • Heads up that the online-converter link is no longer valid. – J0e3gan Jul 16 '14 at 07:38
  • Very good results came from Softany converter, but it has to be bought. It took very long, but parses the chm itself and recalculates everything. The ZamZar converter (link in update) gave me bad results. A little better was to print it to pdf from the chm-viewer, but especially headers and footers were handled very nasty. – casiosmu Feb 10 '22 at 16:00