10 Minute Guide to Word for Windows 95

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The Help System

In this lesson, you'll learn how to use Word's online Help system.

The Help Command

The Help command lets you access Word's online Help system, which can display program information and instructions on your screen. One way to access the Help system is via the Help command on the main menu. This menu has five commands on it:

This lesson explains the most useful parts of the Help system in this lesson. Please refer to your program documentation if you want additional information on the Microsoft Network or WordPerfect Help.


Timesaver Tip: Quick Help You can display the Help Topics screen as you edit your document by pressing F1.

The Help Topics Screen

The Help Topics screen has four tabs that let you access different parts of the Help system.

Contents

See the Contents tab in Figure 2.1. Each title, or book, in the list describes a section of the Help material. To open a book, select it, and then click the Open button. To close an open book, double-click the open-book icon next to the title.

Figure 2.1
The Contents tab on the Help Topics screen.


When you open a book, a list of its chapters appear, as shown in Figure 2.2. A question-mark icon marks the book chapters. To open a chapter, click the question-mark icon, and then click Open. A book may also contain other books, which you can open the same way.

Figure 2.2
An opened Help book displays its chapter headings.


Two different Help screens may appear when you open a chapter. One is a graphical screen that provides a picture of the selected topic. This type of screen (see Figure 2.3) has labels that you can click to display additional information on a specific task or topic.

Figure 2.3
A graphical Help screen.


A text screen also provides Help information, as shown in Figure 2.4. Many text screens have buttons you can click for more information.

Figure 2.4
A text Help screen.


On any Help screen, click the Help Topics button to close the Help screen and return to the Help Topics window. Or press Esc to close the Help screen and return to your document.

Index

The Index tab provides an alphabetical list of Help topics, as shown in Figure 2.5. You can scroll through the list to find the one of interest, or you can start typing a word in the first box; the list will automatically scroll to the proper section. Click the topic you want in the list, and then click the Display button. If you want to scroll through the list, you can click the scroll bar arrows to search for a topic.

Figure 2.5
The Index tab on the Help Topics screen.

Find

The Find tab in the Help Topics window (Figure 2.6) lets you search the Help system for the topic you need.


Figure 2.6
The Find tab on the Help Topics screen.
To use the Find tab:

1. Type the term or topic you want to find in the first box.

2. In the second box, click the term or topic that most closely matches the term you typed.

3.
The third box displays a list of Help topics that related to the selected term. Click the desired topic and then click the Display button.

Word displays a Help screen with information on the selected topic.

Answer Wizard

The Answer Wizard lets you find Help information by asking questions in your own words. It's one of Word 7.0's new features. You can access the Answer Wizard by selecting Answer Wizard from the Help menu, or by selecting the Answer Wizard tab in the Help Topics screen. The Answer Wizard provides an unusual way for you to obtain Help information, as shown in Figure 2.7.

Figure 2.7
The Answer Wizard.


To use the Answer Wizard, type a question or request into the number 1 text box on the Answer Wizard screen, and then press Enter or click the Search button. You may be wondering how you check spelling. Word displays a list of topics that it thinks might answer your question. Click the topic you want to view, and then click the Display button. For most topics, Word then displays a Help screen with the relevant information. In some cases, Word will "demonstrate" the task to you by issuing the needed menu commands.

The Tip Wizard

When the Tip Wizard is active, it "watches" you work and displays helpful hints about what you are doing. The Tip Wizard appears below the Formatting toolbar, as shown in Figure 2.8. In this figure, the Tip Wizard displays a tip about Word's automatic spell-checking feature (which you'll learn about in Lesson 21).

Figure 2.8
The Tip Wizard displays helpful hints about what you are doing.


To turn the Tip Wizard display on or off, select View Toolbars, and then click the Tip Wizard option. When the Tip Wizard is turned on, it detects you doing certain things and flashes the yellow light bulb in its window; you will see a tip or hint. You can scroll through previously displayed tips using the scroll bar at the right end of the Tip Wizard window.

Normally, the Tip Wizard displays each tip only once. To reset the Tip Wizard so that it will display previous tips again in the future, press Ctrl and click the light bulb on the Tip Wizard.

If the Tip Wizard appears but does not display any tips, you may need to activate it:

1. Select Tools Options to display the Options dialog box.

2. Click the General tab, if necessary.

3.
Click the TipWizard Active option to turn it on.

4. Select OK.

Context-Sensitive Help

If you are using Word's menus or dialog boxes, you can obtain context-sensitive Help at any time by pressing F1. If you highlight a menu command, information about that command appears. If you see a dialog box is open, pressing F1 displays information about the dialog box. After you have read Help, press Esc to close it and return to what you were doing.


Plain English: Context-sensitive Help Information directly related to what you are doing at the moment.

In this lesson, you learned how to use the Help system. In the next lesson, you'll learn how to enter and delete text, and how to move around a document.


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