Help with Help files

[Tom marsh]

I'm finishing an application and want to supply help files. However MS
Access's help files, ironically don't contain much help on HELP. What is
the best approach? I could easily just provide .doc files and shell out to
Wordpad.exe, but is there a better way? I'm using Access 2002. Any help is
appreciated.

[Tony Toews]

Re: Help with Help files

"Tom marsh" <lee.marsh@good will-suncoast.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
>I'm finishing an application and want to supply help files. However MS
>Access's help files, ironically don't contain much help on HELP. What is
>the best approach? I could easily just provide .doc files and shell out to
>Wordpad.exe, but is there a better way? I'm using Access 2002. Any help is
>appreciated.[/color]

See my Microsoft Access Help System Tips page at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/accshelp.htm for an overview of the process.

Also see David Liske's Access HTML help page at

http://www.mvps.org/htmlhelpcenter/htmlhelp/hhaccess.html

Tony

--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at

http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm

[Saintor]

Re: Help with Help files

My favorite is Shalom Help. Freeware. Won't get any easier than this.

http://www.danish-shareware.dk/soft/shelpm/index.html

Old type help file.. but what the hell, I still use ACC97! :o)

"Tom marsh" <lee.marsh@good will-suncoast.com> wrote in message
news:ZeYhb.8820 6$Of2.3516706@t wister.tampabay .rr.com...[color=blue]
> I'm finishing an application and want to supply help files. However MS
> Access's help files, ironically don't contain much help on HELP. What is
> the best approach? I could easily just provide .doc files and shell out[/color]
to[color=blue]
> Wordpad.exe, but is there a better way? I'm using Access 2002. Any help[/color]
is[color=blue]
> appreciated.
>
>[/color]

[TC]

Re: Help with Help files


"Tom marsh" <lee.marsh@good will-suncoast.com> wrote in message
news:ZeYhb.8820 6$Of2.3516706@t wister.tampabay .rr.com...[color=blue]
> I'm finishing an application and want to supply help files. However MS
> Access's help files, ironically don't contain much help on HELP. What is
> the best approach? I could easily just provide .doc files and shell out[/color]
to[color=blue]
> Wordpad.exe, but is there a better way? I'm using Access 2002. Any help[/color]
is[color=blue]
> appreciated.[/color]


I do it the hard way using MS Help Workshop. You create an MS Word document
using footnotes, strikethroughs & other things to indicate topic headings, &
so on. Then Help Workshop prduces the HLP file. It is all *very* fiddly &
has a reasonable learning curve. Using a 3rd part tool, as suggested by the
other respondents, would be a better way to go.

Also, remember that there are some good freeware products for "reverse
engineering" an HLP file into a prinatble Word document. This gives you a
printable manual, with little or no extra work. When you structure your
help, put related topics together, even if this is irrelevent to the online
process (because the topics are called-up by number from different places in
your system). Then, if you reverse engineer a doc file from the HLP file,
the result will be better, & require less editing to produce a decent
printed manual.

HTH,
TC