What has happened to the Word Help files (2003)

Topic

New Reply

What has happened to Word’s help files? Are we now stuck with using the Office Assistant style of help? I have always navigated help by searching the Index and if I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted I would find something close in the Index and flick back to the Contents tab. I have always hated the Office Assistant Help format!!! Please tell me all is not lost and a proper help file is just hidden away under a few layers.

Reply | Quote

Replies

I’m afraid that what you see is what you get in Word 2003. When you click on the Help (question mark) icon, press F1 or select Help>Microsoft Office Word Help, you are presented with the Help Task Pane. I have been using 2003 for several months now, and I cannot find the old “Index” anywhere. You are absolutely right – searching the index was an invaluable source of information, but apparently Microsoft has decided that we don’t require this feature any longer.

What you can customize is whether or not to use online content. In the Help Task Pane, select Online Content Settings…..and then choose whether or not to use the online help features. In either case, the Table of Contents is there but the Index is gone. Too bad.

Reply | Quote

My goodness – I guess I’ll put off migrating to Office 2003 as long as possible…

Reply | Quote

In all fairness though, the help content is good. Although you can’t scroll through an index from top to bottom, you can type in a word or phrase in the “Search for” dialogue and multiple results are returned. This behaviour is similar to previous versions of Help. Enabling online help is probably the better option, as many of the help topics are (or are supposed to be) being updated as opposed to the static nature of the old disk based index.

Reply | Quote

In all fairness though, the help content is good. Although you can’t scroll through an index from top to bottom, you can type in a word or phrase in the “Search for” dialogue and multiple results are returned. This behaviour is similar to previous versions of Help. Enabling online help is probably the better option, as many of the help topics are (or are supposed to be) being updated as opposed to the static nature of the old disk based index.

Reply | Quote

My goodness – I guess I’ll put off migrating to Office 2003 as long as possible…

Reply | Quote

I’m afraid that what you see is what you get in Word 2003. When you click on the Help (question mark) icon, press F1 or select Help>Microsoft Office Word Help, you are presented with the Help Task Pane. I have been using 2003 for several months now, and I cannot find the old “Index” anywhere. You are absolutely right – searching the index was an invaluable source of information, but apparently Microsoft has decided that we don’t require this feature any longer.

What you can customize is whether or not to use online content. In the Help Task Pane, select Online Content Settings…..and then choose whether or not to use the online help features. In either case, the Table of Contents is there but the Index is gone. Too bad.

Reply | Quote

Are there still .CHM files under c:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice111033 (that last number is language specific)? If so, there might be a way to launch them in a viewer outside of the application, though I’ve never quite figured out how to get all the tabs when I do that. It must be out there on the web somewhere.

Reply | Quote

Thank you all for your input…it’s nice to know I’m not going crazy. The online help is not really much use to users in Oz where broadband connections are so expensive. We plebs rely on dial-up. Maybe the folks at Microsoft will come to their collective senses and give us the option to use an old style help

Reply | Quote

Cheryl,
As Jefferson pointed out, a .chm file exists for almost every application within Office 2003. All of these files can be found in the “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOFFICE111033” directory and they are much like the “old” help files. Jefferson’s post has the proper code for accessing the Word help file (WDMAIN11.CHM) from within Word. Copy and paste this code into the VBA editor (you can change the second subroutine to something like “Sub Start Help_Index()”). Then, create a toolbar button and assign the code from the second sub to the button. Now, the ( almost ) old help files are back!

You can also add this functionality to the other applications within Office 2003.

Reply | Quote

That is so wonderful! I have wanted the old help back ever since upgrading to 2003. Thanks Jefferson and John for this info. It works great!

Kent

Reply | Quote

That is so wonderful! I have wanted the old help back ever since upgrading to 2003. Thanks Jefferson and John for this info. It works great!

Kent

Reply | Quote

Life as we know and love it can now continue…thanks heaps. Maybe the folk at Microsoft will include this method as a simple option in future versions. I have my fingers crossed.

Reply | Quote

Life as we know and love it can now continue…thanks heaps. Maybe the folk at Microsoft will include this method as a simple option in future versions. I have my fingers crossed.

Reply | Quote

Cheryl,
As Jefferson pointed out, a .chm file exists for almost every application within Office 2003. All of these files can be found in the “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOFFICE111033” directory and they are much like the “old” help files. Jefferson’s post has the proper code for accessing the Word help file (WDMAIN11.CHM) from within Word. Copy and paste this code into the VBA editor (you can change the second subroutine to something like “Sub Start Help_Index()”). Then, create a toolbar button and assign the code from the second sub to the button. Now, the ( almost ) old help files are back!

You can also add this functionality to the other applications within Office 2003.

Reply | Quote

Thank you all for your input…it’s nice to know I’m not going crazy. The online help is not really much use to users in Oz where broadband connections are so expensive. We plebs rely on dial-up. Maybe the folks at Microsoft will come to their collective senses and give us the option to use an old style help

Reply | Quote

Are there still .CHM files under c:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice111033 (that last number is language specific)? If so, there might be a way to launch them in a viewer outside of the application, though I’ve never quite figured out how to get all the tabs when I do that. It must be out there on the web somewhere.

Reply | Quote