Custom Help File

[Claire]

I've asked so many questions of you kind people, but if I can get this to
work, my project is done!

I created a custom help file with the use of Shalom Help which was
recommended on this site. I thought that would be the hard part, but with
Shalom Help it was quite simple. I now have two files - one .cnt and one .hlp
- for the life of me I cannot get it to work in Access (2003). From
everything I read, it should be a simple matter of entering the path in the
HelpFile property of each file/report. I have tried the complete path alone,
with and without "s, with and without =, the title only (since it's in the
same file as the program), I have considered the possibility that it's a
function that does not work with the standard Access program - but then why
is the property there? I have even considered re-doing the whole Help File
using Html Workshop. Does anyone know what in the world I'm doing wrong?!

Please help!

 

[John Nurick]

Hi Claire,

As far as I know it's not enough to put the name and location of the
help file in the HelpFile property of the object. You also have to set
the HelpContextID property of each object to the value associated with
the help topic you want to be displayed when the user selects that
object and presses F1.

The HelpContextID values are arbitrary numbers which you map to the
relevant help topics in the [MAP] section of the help project (hpj)
file, e.g.

[MAP]
IDH_frmMainForm=1001
IDH_frmContacts=1002

The topic IDs here are the ones you assigned using # footnotes in the
RTF file (I've never used Shalom Help, but assume it creates an RTF file
and uses the Windows help compiler to compile it).

There's lots of useful information on both WinHelp and HTML Help at
www.helpmaster.com .

 

[Claire]

The way I understood it is that if you left the HelpContextID at 0, F1 would
open to the main page of the Help File. Am I wrong about that?

Hi Claire,

As far as I know it's not enough to put the name and location of the
help file in the HelpFile property of the object. You also have to set
the HelpContextID property of each object to the value associated with
the help topic you want to be displayed when the user selects that
object and presses F1.

The HelpContextID values are arbitrary numbers which you map to the
relevant help topics in the [MAP] section of the help project (hpj)
file, e.g.

[MAP]
IDH_frmMainForm=1001
IDH_frmContacts=1002

The topic IDs here are the ones you assigned using # footnotes in the
RTF file (I've never used Shalom Help, but assume it creates an RTF file
and uses the Windows help compiler to compile it).

There's lots of useful information on both WinHelp and HTML Help at
www.helpmaster.com .

I've asked so many questions of you kind people, but if I can get this to
work, my project is done!

I created a custom help file with the use of Shalom Help which was
recommended on this site. I thought that would be the hard part, but with
Shalom Help it was quite simple. I now have two files - one .cnt and one .hlp
- for the life of me I cannot get it to work in Access (2003). From
everything I read, it should be a simple matter of entering the path in the
HelpFile property of each file/report. I have tried the complete path alone,
with and without "s, with and without =, the title only (since it's in the
same file as the program), I have considered the possibility that it's a
function that does not work with the standard Access program - but then why
is the property there? I have even considered re-doing the whole Help File
using Html Workshop. Does anyone know what in the world I'm doing wrong?!

Please help!

 

[Claire]

Ignore my previous response! You were absolutely right and now it works.
Thank you so much!

Hi Claire,

As far as I know it's not enough to put the name and location of the
help file in the HelpFile property of the object. You also have to set
the HelpContextID property of each object to the value associated with
the help topic you want to be displayed when the user selects that
object and presses F1.

The HelpContextID values are arbitrary numbers which you map to the
relevant help topics in the [MAP] section of the help project (hpj)
file, e.g.

[MAP]
IDH_frmMainForm=1001
IDH_frmContacts=1002

The topic IDs here are the ones you assigned using # footnotes in the
RTF file (I've never used Shalom Help, but assume it creates an RTF file
and uses the Windows help compiler to compile it).

There's lots of useful information on both WinHelp and HTML Help at
www.helpmaster.com .

I've asked so many questions of you kind people, but if I can get this to
work, my project is done!

I created a custom help file with the use of Shalom Help which was
recommended on this site. I thought that would be the hard part, but with
Shalom Help it was quite simple. I now have two files - one .cnt and one .hlp
- for the life of me I cannot get it to work in Access (2003). From
everything I read, it should be a simple matter of entering the path in the
HelpFile property of each file/report. I have tried the complete path alone,
with and without "s, with and without =, the title only (since it's in the
same file as the program), I have considered the possibility that it's a
function that does not work with the standard Access program - but then why
is the property there? I have even considered re-doing the whole Help File
using Html Workshop. Does anyone know what in the world I'm doing wrong?!

Please help!