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Displaying Help in Forms and Documents

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This content is no longer actively maintained. It is provided as is, for anyone who may still be using these technologies, with no warranties or claims of accuracy with regard to the most recent product version or service release.

In UserForms and Access forms, you can display context-sensitive Help for interface elements and you can display standard Help topics from a Help button on the form. You can also display Help from a form's command bar by adding a toolbar button or menu item that displays a Help topic. In Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio documents, you can display Help by using the Toolbox to insert a Help button in the document.

The method you use to implement context-sensitive Help in forms is very similar across all Office applications. Although the methods used for UserForms and Access forms differ slightly, essentially you specify property settings to identify the Help file that contains context-sensitive Help and then specify the context ID of the context-sensitive Help topic to display for each control.

The method you use to implement a Help button on a form or document depends on which Office application is hosting the form or document. In all cases, you run code triggered by the Click event of the Help command button, but the method used to call the Help topic differs depending on the application. In Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio, you can use the Help method of the Application object to display a custom Help topic. In Word, the Help method of the Application object allows you to display only built-in Help, and Access has no such method. For this reason, implementing a Help button in both Word and Access requires you to use an API call to the HTML Help or WinHelp engine to display the Help topic. If you prefer to use the same method for displaying Help topics regardless of the application (for example, if you want to create code that will run in all Office applications), you must use an API call to the Help engine.

See Also

Adding Help to Your Custom Application | Adding Help to Your Office Application | The Kinds of Help You Can Use | Creating a Help File to Use with an Office Application | Specifying the Path to Your Application's Help File | Displaying Help in Forms and Documents | Displaying Help from Command Bars | Using the Office Assistant to Display Help | Displaying Help from VBA Code