Creating Your Own Help Topics

How to Make Custom Help Content Accessible to Users

After you create custom Help content, you need to make your custom Help and Answer Wizard (AW) files accessible to your users by following these steps:

1. Determine whether you are going to store the custom Help files on each user’s computer or on a network share.
2. Distribute the files to that location.
3. Update each user’s Windows registry to point to the correct location.

   There are separate registry entries for AW files and compressed HTML (CHM) files. You do not need to register uncompiled HTML files.

Tip   You can store an AW file in any location as long as your users have access to the location. Storing the AW file on users’ computers can improve access speed, especially if you have a congested network.

After the AW file and CHM or HTML files are in the desired location, the Windows registry of each client computer must be updated to reflect the location of the AW file and CHM files.

Note   If you need to update the contents of an AW file after you’ve registered the file, just replace the file with an updated version. You don’t need to register the file again, as long as you use the same file name.

If you have not yet deployed Office 2000, you can use the Office Custom Installation Wizard to include the custom Help and AW files in your client installation. The Office Custom Installation Wizard also helps you update the registries for your client computers with paths to these new files.

If you have already deployed Office 2000, you must edit the registries for your client computers. You can use a system policy to register the AW file, but you must edit the registry manually to add a new CHM file.

Tip   The easiest way to administer customized Help is to set up the custom Help content on a Web site, store the AW file on a network share, and then set the locations through system policies. By having everything stored on network servers, and the file registration handled by system policies, you can avoid configuring the client computers individually.

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Register a new Answer Wizard file before deploying Office

If you haven’t yet deployed Office 2000, you can use the Office Custom Installation Wizard to register the AW file. On the Add Registry Entries panel of the Office Custom Installation Wizard, add a new entry in the registry in one of the Answer Wizard subkeys.

Values for the new entry take the REG_SZ data type. Use a unique name for the entry name and use the path where the AW file resides, including the AW file name, as the value.

There are separate Answer Wizard subkeys for each of the following Office 2000 applications:

• Word
• Excel
• Microsoft PowerPoint®
• Access
• Microsoft Outlook®
• Graph
• Binder

The Answer Wizard subkeys are stored in the following path in the Windows registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\ApplicationName\Answer Wizard

For example, if you create a new AW file called Plugins.aw for Word and place it in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office folder, you add a new entry called PluginsAW to the following subkey:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Word\Answer Wizard

Then you assign the following path as its value:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\plugins.aw

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Register a new Answer Wizard file after deploying Office

If you’ve already deployed Office 2000, you can use a system policy to change the registry settings on all the computers in your organization at one time. You use the Custom Answer Wizard database path system policy in the Miscellaneous category for each of the Office applications to add a custom AW file.

Note   The System Policy Editor allows only one AW file per Office application. If you need to add more AW files, you must manually create a separate registry entry for each new file.

For example, to add the file Plugins.aw to the Answer Wizard in Word, select the Custom Answer Wizard database path system policy under the Miscellaneous category for Word 2000, and then type C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\plugins.aw in the Custom Answer Wizard database path box.

Note   You must have your users restart the appropriate application in order to use a new AW file. For example, if you added a new AW file with topics for Excel, your users must restart Excel. Restarting the application is not necessary if you reset the list of AW files by calling AnswerWizard.ResetFileList in Visual Basic for Applications.

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Register a new CHM file

You can use the Office Custom Installation Wizard to register a new CHM file before you deploy Office 2000, or you can register the CHM file manually after deployment. Either way, to register the CHM file, you create a new entry in the registry in the following subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\HTML Help

Values for the new entry take the REG_SZ data type. Use the CHM file name as the entry name and the path where the CHM file resides as the value. For example, if you create a new CHM file called Plugins.chm and place it in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office folder, add a new entry called Plugins.chm and assign the following path as its value:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office

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See also

The Office Custom Installation Wizard can install your new CHM and AW files, and even update registry settings on all client computers when you deploy Office 2000. For more information, see Office Custom Installation Wizard Reference.

The System Policy Editor can save you time by helping you push registry settings out to all client computers on your network. For more information, see Using the System Policy Editor.