Word 2003 help

[bthackston]

Is there any way to get back to the good old help files we used to have in previous versions of Office? I can't stand this hunter-gatherer method of sifting through mountains of Web info to find out what a specific toolbar button does. I don't generally have several hours to invest in finding information that used to be available on my hard drive.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Open the Help task pane and click the bottom item, "Online Content
Settings". In the dialog, uncheck the option for "Search online content when
connected". That will restrict searches to the "offline" help on your hard
drive.

You might want to check the online help every now and then, because topics
there will be updated while the ones on your drive will always be the same.
It remains to be seen just how useful the updates will be. I suspect the
basic topics won't change much, but there will be additional templates and
other goodies added to the online content.

Personally, I don't object to the volume of online stuff as much as I do the
slowness of the servers that maintain and search it. Even with a broadband
connection, the online help seems to take forever.

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

In addition, if all you want is to learn about toolbar buttons, the Tools |
Customize dialog usually has a description as you highlight them in turn.
It's still sifting through a mountain of possible toolbar commands, but
might be easier than Help.

And presumably you have ScreenTips enabled, which provides a name that may
or may not be helpful in learning the function of a toolbar button.

DM