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Help, Environment, Options Dialog Box

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The Help page of the Options dialog box allows you to choose documentation sets and whether to display topics internally in the integrated development environment (IDE) or externally in a separate window. You can access this dialog box by selecting Options from the Tools menu and choosing Help from the Environment folder.

Note   Changes made to the options on this page do not take effect until the environment is restarted.

  • Preferred Language
    Specifies the display language for the documentation collections installed on your machine.

  • Preferred Collection
    Displays sets of Help topics available from the Visual Studio .NET help system. The default "Visual Studio .NET 2003 Combined Help Collection" (VSCC) includes all of the documentation installed with the program, plus any additional Help collections installed that are designed to be integrated with Visual Studio .NET, such as Help for Visual Studio updates and add-ons. The other choices listed in the Preferred Collection menu are Help collections that were registered on your machine when Visual Studio .NET was installed.

    Caution   To retain access to all of your Visual Studio Help, select the default choice, "Visual Studio .NET 2003 Combined Help Collection."

    If you change the Preferred Help Collection, you must close and restart Visual Studio .NET to complete this change. The program might take a few minutes to restart as it changes which collections of help topics can be viewed in the Table of Contents, the Index, and in Search results lists.

    Instead of selecting a non-default Preferred Collection, consider using filters to focus searches on Help topics related to your needs. For more information, see Customizing Dynamic Help. You can also use the Combined Help Collection Manager to change which Help collections are included in the default VSCC collection. To access this tool, see Using the Combined Help Collection Manager.

  • Internal Help
    Displays Help topics in a Web browser window docked inside the IDE.

  • External Help
    Displays Help topics in an external floating window.

See Also

Using Help in Visual Studio .NET | Environment, Options Dialog Box | International Settings, Environment, Options Dialog Box | Window Management