Best Way to Create Help Screens for Excel Forms

[Bob Kaku]

I'd like to create help screens for various userforms I have on an Excel
application. I'd like to display the help screens with the press of a
button on each userform. But, I'm wondering what's the best method for
creating help screens. I've considered the following 3 alternatives.

1. Create help screens that are userforms themselves. That would give
me the freedom to embed .bmp images. But, the text-editing would be
cumbersome in a textbox control.

2. I thought about having a text-only help screens that I can have
executed from using the Shell command. But, the problem is that the
location of NOTEPAD.EXE can vary from computer to computer.

3. I thought about putting all the help on a webpage. But, that could
take up a lot space on the web server, especially I want include
graphics. Plus, I don't how many people would want to refer back to a
webpage for help.

Does anybody have any other good suggestions?

Thanks in advance.



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[Neil]

Bob,

Have a look at this page in John Walkenbach's site
http://j-walk.com/ss/excel/tips/tip51.htm

Neil

 

[Keith Willshaw]

I'd like to create help screens for various userforms I have on an Excel
application. I'd like to display the help screens with the press of a
button on each userform. But, I'm wondering what's the best method for
creating help screens. I've considered the following 3 alternatives.

1. Create help screens that are userforms themselves. That would give
me the freedom to embed .bmp images. But, the text-editing would be
cumbersome in a textbox control.

2. I thought about having a text-only help screens that I can have
executed from using the Shell command. But, the problem is that the
location of NOTEPAD.EXE can vary from computer to computer.

3. I thought about putting all the help on a webpage. But, that could
take up a lot space on the web server, especially I want include
graphics. Plus, I don't how many people would want to refer back to a
webpage for help.

Does anybody have any other good suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

You can use a commercial help programme like robohelp and
compile a .hlp file who's entries can be accessed from VBA

Keith

 

[Pete Lees]

Bob,

I'd like to create help screens for various userforms I have on an Excel
application. I'd like to display the help screens with the press of a
button on each userform.

I would recommend delivering the help in a WinHelp (.hlp) or HTML Help
(.chm) file, as these are the standard formats for online help in
Windows. This page provides extensive information on how to connect
WinHelp and HTML Help files to Excel applications:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/office/office2000/proddocs/opg/part2/ch13.asp

And for guidelines on how to start building your help file, see:

http://helpware.net/htmlhelp/basics.htm