Creating a Topic File

When creating What's This? Help topic files, keep in mind that each topic must contain a unique topic ID number. The Help application needs a unique ID to display topics correctly. The steps below describe how to create a new topic whether you are using Winhelp or HTML Help.

To create a simple Winhelp topic file (.rtf) in Microsoft Word:

  1. Open Microsoft® Word.
  2. Create a new document.
  3. From the Insert menu, click Footnote. The Footnotes and End Note dialog box appears.
  4. Select the Custom Mark option button, enter a pound sign (#) in the adjacent field, and click OK. The document window displays a footnote area.
  5. In the footnote area, enter a unique context string to the right of the pound sign. Do not include spaces in the context string. One common method is to use underscores for more descriptive context strings, such as:

water_pump_onoff_btn

  1. Click the Close button on the footnote pane to close the footnote area and return to a full-screen document window. (To view the footnote text again, double-click the footnote symbol at the top of the topic.)
  2. To the right of the footnote symbol, on the main page, enter the information that you want to appear in the Help pop-up window.

NOTE: If you want to create more topics, repeat steps 2-5 for each topic. Additionally, add a manual page break between the topics. Each topic must appear on a separate page in the .RTF file.  (In Microsoft Word, select Ctrl+Enter to create a manual page break between Help topics.)

  1. Save the document as an .RTF file.

To create a simple HTML Help topic file (.htm) in a text editor:

  1. Open a text editor, such as Notepad.

NOTE: Optionally, you can use an HTML Editor such as Macromedia® HomeSite® or Microsoft® FrontPage®. This allows you to add more formatting to your HTML page, without requiring a lot of knowledge of how to use HMTL tags.

  1. Copy (CTRL+C) the following text to the Windows clipboard, and paste (CTRL+V) it into your text editor:

<HTML>

<HEAD>

<TITLE>Title 1</TITLE>

</HEAD>

<body>

 

<H1><font face="Arial">Title 1 </font> </H1>

<P><font face="Arial">Paragraph 1 </font> </P>

</BODY>

</HTML>

  1. Enter a title (heading) in the two "Title 1" sections, shown bolded above.
  2. Replace "Paragraph 1" (shown bolded above) with the rest of the information that you want to appear in the Help pop-up window.
  3. Save the file.

 

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