Adding a .chm help file to Word

Topic

New Reply

I downloaded the .chm (compiled HTML help file) on Mail Merging from Microsoft and thought it would be a neat thing to add a menu line in the Window|Help menu to open that file. Unfortunately, a lot of search in the MS KB and in the VB Project Explorer didn’t show me what I need.

I thought a shell command would do the job but I get an ‘invalid procedure call or arguement’ error. getting stumped now. here’s the shell code (very simple!):

Dim RetVal
RetVal = Shell(“C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice1033Word2000.chm”, 1)

This sort of thing should be fairly common for developers, so maybe I am just missing something obvious, but i’m getting tuckered out now.

I thank you in advance for your help…

Word 2000 SR-1, Office 2000, Windows 2000 5.0.2195

Reply | Quote

Replies

Steve

You don’t need to do any coding. Just use a plain old hyperlink.

Tools | Customize => Select the Web Category. Drag the ‘Open’ into the menu where you want it and then right click it and change its name and chose the hyperlink option down the bottom to link in the chm file.

I haven’t figured out how to avoid the nag message that the user will get when clicking the button so let me know if you work it out.

Reply | Quote

Thanks! Worked like a charm. I duplicated the action in a macro after using ‘hyperlink’ to search thru the Project Explorer and no problems there. On the nag screen, I tried a couple of things: 1) setting internet securities all the way down and 2) using Sendkeys in the macro to close the dialog box. Neither thing worked.

Ah well. At least I can get the help file to open, so thanks!

Reply | Quote

Just wondering as to whether anybody found a way of displaying the helpfile (.chm) without the annoying nag dialog (that asks Would you like to open this file …)?

OR

Perhaps any other way of opening and running a .chm file?

Thanks.

Reply | Quote

What version of Windows? Try turning off the “Confirm open after download” setting (shown as it appears in Windows 2000). Of course, making this registry change on user’s PCs could be a bit more sensitive…

Reply | Quote

Maybe the Shell command expects to open an executable program, rather than a file with a “hot” association.
So perhaps a commandline expression (something) like this would work:

RetVal = Shell(hh.exe “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice1033Word2000.chm”, 1)

I’m not sure of the syntax here – and I always manage to wrong guess where those &*^%$#@ quotes go.

Alan

Edited:
In fact, this commandline works:
hh.exe “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice1033Wdweb9.chm”, 1

so hopefully it will from Shell also.

Reply | Quote

boy this is an old thread! i can’t even find the project i was working on that spawned the original inquiry and the whole issue is basically moribund for me. if memory serves, I didn’t like the nag screens and decided the added help file wasn’t going to be as helpful as i thought so just dropped the whole thing.

Reply | Quote