Problem accessing Office Help

[Ron Rosenfeld]

I will also post this in one of the IE groups, but I haven't set that up yet
(and various Google searches have been unrewarding).

I can rarely access Office Help (in any of the Office programs, including
Excel).

What usually happens is that Help returns a screen:

This page is unavailable
The page you are looking for is unavailable. Try the following:
Click Refresh on the toolbar
Click Back on the toolbar, and then click the link to the page again
Show offline content from this computer.


However, the Table of Contents will download; the icon at the bottom right
shows "Connected to Office Online"

If I click on a Table of Contents item, the word "downloading" will appear as
the index item "expands", but the main screen on the right still shows the
above message.

In addition, even if I select to "show offline content", the "This Page is
unavailable" message persists.

The only other abnormality I have found is that if I select View Source from an
Internet Explorer page, nothing happens.

I have set my IE security and privacy settings to default. I have cleared the
temporary Internet and browsing history files (this seemed to help for two or
three accesses, but then things started acting up again). And I have even made
IE my default browser.

There do not seem to be any contemporaneous events in Event Viewer.

If I do a "clean boot", using msconfig to disable everything except Microsoft
Services, I get the same results.

However, if I boot into Safe mode (with networking), the behavior of both the
Office Help system, and the "View Source" in IE appears normal.

Today I went to the MS update site and downloaded all the relevant updates I
could find (and I do download system updates as a matter of course).

I have run Office Diagnostics with no problems found.

I have Windows XP Prof SP3
IE8
Office 2007

Any thoughts?

Thanks
--ron

 

[Joel]

What I found to get the help to work I first have to open each of the books
in the "contents tab" of the help menu. Excel doesn't automatically install
the help until you use it the 1st time. Doing a search before it is
installed is probably creating the error. Excel will only search the books
that have been previously opend so if you install one book then it will
search for through the one book and then search the web for answers or not
give you any results.

 

[Ron Rosenfeld]

What I found to get the help to work I first have to open each of the books
in the "contents tab" of the help menu. Excel doesn't automatically install
the help until you use it the 1st time. Doing a search before it is
installed is probably creating the error. Excel will only search the books
that have been previously opend so if you install one book then it will
search for through the one book and then search the web for answers or not
give you any results.

If, by "open each of the books", you mean to select items from the Table of
Contents panel, that doesn't work. I still get the "This page is unavailable"
message in the right hand panel.

If you mean something else, could you please elaborate?

Thanks.
--ron

 

[Joel]

That usually solves the problem. either you installed the help when office
got installed and the books would open, or you would of been requested to
put the office installation disk into the CD drive. This implies that the
poiunter to the books are wrong.

try looking at the registry

to open register editor

1) Start
2) 2003 Run
type into run box : Regedit
3) Vista
Search for Rededit in the find in the start menu
4) go to this path in the register editor

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Common\Assistant

look at the variable Assitfile. check if the file exists. If it doesn't
then search c drive for the file. I might be under a different office
forlder Office 10, office 11, office 12.

You could delete a registry entry. windows automatically creates missing
registry entries if the aren't found and sets them to the default values.
Sometimes registry items get corrupted.

 

[Ron Rosenfeld]

That usually solves the problem. either you installed the help when office
got installed and the books would open, or you would of been requested to
put the office installation disk into the CD drive. This implies that the
poiunter to the books are wrong.

Well, something happened because this used to work.

try looking at the registry

to open register editor

1) Start
2) 2003 Run
type into run box : Regedit
3) Vista
Search for Rededit in the find in the start menu
4) go to this path in the register editor

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Common\Assistant

look at the variable Assitfile.

Perhaps you mean

AsstFile
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\clippit.acs

check if the file exists.

It *does* exist, and it's in the designated folder (OFFICE11).

If it doesn't
then search c drive for the file. I might be under a different office
forlder Office 10, office 11, office 12.

You could delete a registry entry. windows automatically creates missing
registry entries if the aren't found and sets them to the default values.
Sometimes registry items get corrupted.

Thank you for trying to work this through with me.
--ron