Adding Help to Your Office 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This content is no longer actively maintained.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.
You can display Help topics to assist users of your Office solutions in the following ways.
| Object or area | Kinds of Help you can provide |
| Documents | Help topics that are displayed by clicking a Help button or a command bar control |
| UserForms | Context-sensitive Help for controls
Help topics that are displayed by clicking a Help button or pressing F1 |
| Access forms and reports | Context-sensitive Help for controls
Help topics that are displayed by clicking a Help button or pressing F1 |
| Command bars | Context-sensitive Help for command bar controls
Help topics that are displayed by clicking a command bar control |
| Office Assistant | Help topics that are displayed by clicking a button in the Help balloon or (if you have the Answer Wizard SDK and create the necessary files) by querying the Office Assistant |
| VBA code | Help topics that are displayed by using the Help method of the Application object
Help topics that are displayed by clicking the Help button, when you are using the InputBox and MsgBox functions Help topics for custom error messages, when you are using the Raise method of the Err object Context-sensitive Help topics for custom properties and methods you define in class modules (displayed through the Object Browser or by pressing F1 in a code module) Help topics that are displayed by using HtmlHelp API calls |
| Script | Help topics that are displayed by using the commands and methods of the HTML Help ActiveX control |
The following sections provide details and pointers on how to add Help to your Office solution in all of these ways.
Maintaining Backward Compatibility with Office 97 Applications
If your solution needs to maintain backward compatibility with Office 97 applications, you should supply all Help authored and compiled as WinHelp 4.0 files by using Microsoft Help Workshop or some other WinHelp 4.0 authoring tool. The standard properties and methods available to display Help in Office 97 applications don't support using HTML Help files to display context-sensitive Help or standard Help topics.
However, you can display standard Help topics (but not context-sensitive Help) in Office 97 applications from HTML Help files if you create a function declaration to call the HtmlHelp API directly to display the topic. For information about using the HtmlHelp API to display a standard Help topic, see "Displaying Help by Using the HtmlHelp API" later in this chapter.
For information about creating WinHelp 4.0 files, see the Help system in Microsoft Help Workshop.