Adding Help to Your Custom Solution

This content is no longer actively maintained. It is provided as is, for anyone who may still be using these technologies, with no warranties or claims of accuracy with regard to the most recent product version or service release.

Adding online Help to your Microsoft Office solution can reduce the amount of time required to train and support users of your solutions. By using the tools provided with Microsoft HTML Help Workshop or your favorite HTML editor, you can author topics for a Help system by using the same tools and technologies used to create Web pages — including hyperlinks, ActiveX controls, scripting, and Dynamic HTML (DHTML) support. You can then compile your topics into a single file and display them by using the same viewer that is used to display Help in Microsoft Office 2000.

By using standard properties and methods, you can integrate Help topics and context-sensitive Help into your solution's custom dialog boxes, error messages, and forms. If you want even more control over how HTML Help is displayed and integrated into your solution, you can work directly with HtmlHelp application programming interface (API) calls from your Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code.

If you purchased Microsoft Office 2000 Developer or the Microsoft Office 2000 Resource Kit (Microsoft, 1999), you can use the Answer Wizard Software Development Kit (SDK) to integrate your own Help topics with those returned to users in Office 2000 by the Microsoft Office Assistant.

You can also use the navigation functionality of the HTML Help ActiveX control, such as a hierarchical table of contents or an index, on Web pages independently of using the HTML Help Viewer.

Contents

What Is Microsoft HTML Help?

Adding Help to Your Office Solution

Using HTML Help to Author a Web Site

Where to Go from Here