Adding help files in vb.net

After adding a helpprovider from the tools to my form, I place a help button called helpbtn on my form for the sole purpose of associating my help file with a control. I set the show help property of helpbtn which appears as a property when the helpprovider is added to the form and appears in the tray at the bottom of the form to true.

I then define hp as a help provider with dim hp as helpprovider and then set hp equal to helpprovider1 which is the name of the helpprovider that has been added to my form. I set hp. HelpNamespace equal to the path and filename of my help. We are almost done now. In the click method for my menu help I have the statement: Help. ShowHelp Button1, hp. HelpNamespace and when I click on the help button in my menu, my help file appears.

Oh yes, so as not to confuse people with having a help button on the form as well as a help button on the menu, I place the form's help button always below the bottom of the screen. Setting it to invisible disables it so hiding it off screen keeps it enabled. Other than a place to associate a help file with, I do not use it. I have no other control on my form that is always enabled and visible.

Monday, May 7, PM. Hi Bill I also would like to hear someone say something about this. Wednesday, May 2, PM. Add "Application Help" tvHelp. Nodes 0. Add "Introduction" tvHelp. Add "Methods" tvHelp. Nodes 1. Add "Properties" tvHelp. Nodes 2. SelectSingleNode "title". InnerText tvHelp. Count - 1 tvHelp. Nodes i. Show ex. InnerText txtHelp. It will likely be automatically named HelpProvider1. I normally change it to something like hlpPrvMain or anything more appropriate and on the mark.

The only really relevant property you need to set at design-time is the HelpNamespace property, which holds a string value representing the path to the HTMLl Help source file. The source file may be any. However, I later found that it could be used to point to even a.

The HelpProvider component associates itself very neatly with your form and all the controls on it without ado. You can make sure of this fact by checking for HelpXXX properties that come out of nowhere for every control in the Properties window.

I have read somewhere that the component maintains a separate hashtable for each property it provides to all external objects. The properties added include the following: -. This property takes a boolean value and determines whether the Help symbol?

The button will however appear only if the MaximizeBox and MinimizeBox properties for the form are also set to false. Hence, the Help button is a feature normally seen only on Dialog forms. Specifies a constant indicating which elements of the Help file to display. The Help keyword provides the key information to retrieve the help associated with this control from the Help file specified by HelpNamespace. It takes a string value that means different things for different values of the HelpNavigator property.

Refer to table 2 below. The HelpString value represents the help message of the pop-up help windows that appear when the user requests for Help using the Help button or by pressing F1. At design-time, you can associate an instance of HelpProvider with only one Help source.

Your Help source can be set through the HelpNamespace property which accepts a string value representing the path to your.

This property is the only useful property exposed in the component. It is used to contain the name of the help file, which may be an. Additionally, it exposes quite a few useful methods: -. Specifies the keyword used to retrieve Help when the user invokes Help for the specified control.

This string value is used to find the specific help section in the help file that pertains to the specified control. Specifies the Help command to use when retrieving Help from the Help file for the specified control. This method sets the Help string, but does not display the pop-up message. The pop-up will appear the next time the user presses F1 on the control. This method is used to override the flag that determines whether the Help for a control will be displayed or not.

Compiled Help files provide table of contents, index, search, and keyword links in pages. Shortcuts work only in compiled Help files. This is another class that has very little documentation. NET Framework infrastructure and is not intended to be used directly from your code ".

Regardless, note that it is found in the System. Forms namespace, and used to explicitly display Help files from your code. Feedback will be sent to Microsoft: By pressing the submit button, your feedback will be used to improve Microsoft products and services. Privacy policy. The WriteAllText method can be used to append to a text file by specifying that the append parameter is set to True.

Use the WriteAllText method, specifying the target file and string to be appended and setting the append parameter to True. This example writes the string "This is a test string.