The Microsoft Office programs have a built-in help feature. It is primarily made up of 4 features that you can access to research any topic about which you need to find more information.

• The Office Assistant: can answer your questions, offer tips, and provide help for a variety of features specific to the Office program you are using.

• Content and Index: are the reference books on a shelf. You can search for topics, select topics from book titles and chapters, or use the index to locate key words.

• What is this?: displays screen tips that describe certain features or document information.

• Microsoft on the Web: Connects you to a variety of Microsoft internet sites, providing you have internet access.

Using What Is This?

You can learn more about an Office program’s desktop objects using the What’s This? help tool. When you choose Help | What’s This?, your mouse pointer displays a ?. An expanded ToolTip will be displayed when you click on a desk top object. This feature has been expanded in Office XP. You will see a ? button in the upper right corner of each dialog box. If you do not know what an option in the dialog box will do, use the ? button to click on it and an expanded tool tip will be displayed that will help you to understand the option.

Using the Office Assistant

When you activate the Office Assistant (Help | Microsoft “Program” Help), the animated office assistant opens with a dialog bubble asking you “What Would You Like To Do?”. You can change the office assistant options, get tips or search for a topic. MS’s Office assistant is fairly intuitive and will display a list of topics relative to the last commands you executed in your document. It also will attempt to interpret your question to match topics within its database. For Example: The Office Assistant will interpret your statement “Go Away” to mean you want to delete or remove something and will return a list of topics relative to deletions.

Working with the Contents and Index

The Content tab displays the “Books on a Shelf”. Each Book has multiple chapters and topics. You can browse through the various book titles and chapters to find your specific topic. Click on the book icon to open a book. Click on the ? icon to open the topic.

The Index tab allows you to look up key words. It is similar to using the index in any reference book, except instead of a giving you a page reference, it allows you to click through to display the page where the indexed word is located in the reference books.

The Find tab is similar to working with the office assistant; however is not as intuitive and covers a broader and more technical spectrum of topics. Type the topic you want to find. Help will display a list of topics closely matching your query. Select the topic closest to what you want and click on display to open the Help Topic.

Office on the Web

When you select this option from your help menu, you are directed to the online Microsoft Office Assistance Center. Here you will find links to each of the office applications revealing a large selection of techniques you can use in your office work. There is a search engine to help you find assistance on the specific technique that you are trying to learn about.