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Hello,
I've installed SQL server management studio 18.9.1
Out of the box, it's completely missing the dynamic help and the "How do I" entry in the help menu.
Is there something I'm missing? How could I enable it?
Additional SQL Server features and topics not covered by specific categories
Answer accepted by question author
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In the latest version of SSMS - you can configure help to launch in a browser or locally. To configure for local use - you need to download and install the necessary help files. You can use Help | Add and Remove Help Content to download the help files you want to store locally.
If you don't download any content - the default will open the help in a browser.
That Dynamic Help option does not seem familiar to me, but it is not an option I would use even if it existed.
However, try selecting a keyword and press F1 and see what happens.
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Hi,
I did not see the entry you mentioned in the help menu of the SSMS 18.9.1, SSMS 18.5 and SSMS 17.9.1 I installed.
May I know which version of SSMS you use and see these entry in it.
Yeah, in fact I don't see them as well. It should be there under help in SQL Server Management Studio though, according to a book I'm following. (Microsoft SQL server 2019 a Beginner's guide by Dusan Petkovic).
Here the extract:
"One of the main features of SQL Server Management Studio is that it’s easy to use, and that also applies to the Query Editor component...
[...]
There is also the context-sensitive help function called Dynamic Help that enables you to get help on a particular statement. If you do not know the syntax of a statement, just select that statement in the editor and choose Help | Dynamic Help. You can also select options of different Transact-SQL statements to get the corresponding text from Microsoft Learn."
By doing so (higlighting a SQL statment in the query editor), help doesn't show such entry.
Hello,
In my search, I saw that the old version of SSMS(2005) does have these help functions. But the help function of SSMS should have changed very early, these entries no longer exist.