Help File

[hatman]

I'm looking for a FREE helpfile builder. Does anyone have any recommendations?

 

[Andrew Fergus]

Hi

Have a look at the various items available here:
http://www.tucows.com/Windows/DevelopmentWebAuthoring/HelpDocumentation/

Some are freeware, others shareware.

HTH, Andrew

 

[hatman]

Which have YOU used? That particular page is one of hundreds that contain software of various prices, qualities and features. During the course of the day, I must have downloaded at least a dozen that weren't quite right. I was hoping that maybe others had already been down this path and had some opinions of which products might aleady be worthwhile...

 

[Andrew Fergus]

I previously used one that shipped with VB6 - I can't recall the name (it was an MS product) but it wasn't a difficult process. Have you tried this one?
http://www.tucows.com/preview/388694

You say they aren't quite right but without knowing what isn't right about them I'm afraid we can't be much help!

Andrew

 

[hatman]

Thanx Andy! That fits the bill perfectly. I never cease to be amazed when someone seemingly puts out his hand and pull something like out of nowhere. I had actually stumbled onto the page you linked to on my own earlier yesterday... and somehow missed this little gem.

To answer the rest of your commentary: Many of the "Free" programs that I evaluated suddenly required registration or payment to unlock the full program capability... or else they required use of a second program to produce one or more RTF files (or in some other way were not fully integrated within themselves, requiring other programs to even begin to work)... or else they were not full fledged WYSIWYG style interface... or else they wrote to the registry in some way (which my company's security system prevents)... or they required me to be logged on to my machine as an admin to install (again, against my company's security policy).

Again: Thanx Andy!

 

[hatman]

EXCEPT: this application requires the installation of Microsoft HTML Workshop. That install went fine... or seemed to. When I finally tried to do a prelim compile of my project, I got a message that itircl.dll is not registered properly. A quick web search yielded this. Still trying to find the Registry entry that it's looking for... but I am not hopeful. Since I also am not allowed to edit the registry on my computer, I would need to do this using the registry manipulation functions avaible through VBA.

Any thoughts?

Edit: Hmm, tried HTML Help DLL Registrar , but that bombed. I tried this but it's a little above my head, so that didn't pan out. And somehwere I came acros sthis tidbit, which I tried

To resolve this problem follow the commands listed below to register the file itircl.dll:

• Open up a DOS Window by going to Start --> Run.
• Type cmd in the text window.
• Type: cd c:\winnt\system32
• Register itircl.dll by typing: regsvr32 itircl.dll

All to no avail. The application is actually building a .chm file which works okay independently... but VBA just doesn't seem to be able to make a connection to it.

 

[Andrew Fergus]

Hi

I was recently working on a helpfile problem and this thread came to mind. I'm not sure if you have this working ok now (2 months later) but you mentioned HelpNDoc required the installation of 'Html Help Workshop' from Microsoft. I've just realised that is exactly the application I use to create my chm files so it appears HelpNDoc sits atop MS htmlhelp. You can download htmlhelp here.

And there are some handy tutorials here and here.

Your last question mentioned you couldn't get the help file working with VBA - I found this link which walks you through the steps of calling the API and opening the help file. I've used this technique in VB6 and it works fine - the syntax for VBA *should* be identical.

HTH, Andrew