Teach Yourself Windows 95 in 24 Hours, Second Edition

- Hour 7 -

A Call for Help

This hour shows you how to help yourself! That is, how to help yourself find help when using Windows 95. Although this book is really all you'll ever need to use Windows 95 effectively (self-promotion was never one of the author's weak points!), when you get confused, Windows 95 offers a good set of online tools that you can access to find out how to accomplish a specific task.

If you've used previous versions of Windows, there are parts of the Windows 95 screens that may be confusing due to the Windows 95 implementation differences. The Windows 95 online help system lets you point to an item on the screen and request specific help on that item.

The highlights of this hour include:

Why Windows 95 includes online help
How to access the help system
What Roving Help is all about
When to use the help system to display the Welcome Screen

Introducing Help

Even Windows 95 experts need help now and then with Windows 95. Windows 95 is simply too vast, despite its simple appearance and clean desktop, for users to know everything about the system. Windows 95 includes a powerful online help system. Because it is online, the help system is available whenever you need it. For example, if you are working with Explorer and forget how to send a document to the disk, you can search the online help system for the words send to and Windows 95 gives you advice on how to locate and use the Send To command.

There is a tremendous number of ways you can request help while working in Windows 95. There is also a tremendous number of places from which you can get help. This hour focuses on the most common ways that you'll use online help and also offers tips along the way. The next task explains how to access the top-level online help features.

JUST A MINUTE: To use every help feature available to you in Windows 95, you'll need Internet access. Microsoft keeps up-to-date helpful advice on the Web. In addition, some help is available on all Windows 95 installations, but you'll need your Windows 95 CD-ROM to access the Windows 95 Tour described in this hour.

Task 7.1: Accessing Help from the Start Menu

Step 1: Description
The taskbar is always available to you no matter what else you are doing in Windows 95. Even if you've hidden the taskbar behind a running program, the taskbar is available as soon as you point the mouse to the bottom of the screen. You'll find a Help command on the taskbar's Start menu. The Help command displays the online help's primary dialog boxes that enable you to access the help system.

Step 2: Action

1. Click the Start button to display the Start menu.

2. Select Help to request online help. After a brief pause, you will see the Help tabbed dialog box, shown in Figure 7.1.

The dialog box shown in Figure 7.1 shows the initial Help command's screen, with the first tabbed dialog box selected. Task 7.2 explains how you access this dialog box's help information.

Figure 7.1. The Help Contents dialog box displayed from the Start menu.

CAUTION: Depending on the date of your Windows 95 release, you may see a slightly different screen.

3. Actually, your help dialog box might look different from the one in Figure 7.1 because, depending on your system's recent usage, another tab might be selected in the dialog box. Also, another one of the three tabbed dialog boxes may be selected when you issue the Help command from the Start menu.

Figure 7.2 shows the dialog box that appears if the second tab, labeled Index, is selected when you see the Help screen. If you do not see this dialog box now, click the Index tab to display the Index dialog box.

Figure 7.2. The Index dialog box.

Task 7.4 explains how to use the Index dialog box's helpful information.

4. If you click the third tab, labeled Find, you may get the help dialog box shown in Figure 7.3 or you may get a dialog box labeled Find Setup Wizard, shown in Figure 7.4.

Figure 7.3. The Find dialog box.

Figure 7.4. The Find Setup Wizard dialog box.

If you see the Find Setup Wizard dialog box, you will have to execute the wizard to create a table of contents for the Find dialog box. Accept the default wizard values as you follow the wizard screens to build the Find contents. After a brief pause, Windows 95 displays the Find dialog box, shown in Figure 7.3. Task 7.5 explains how to use the Find dialog box when looking for online help.

5. Click the first tab, labeled Contents, to prepare for the next task.

TIME SAVER: Increase your help text's font size if you have difficulty reading the help windows. Right-click over the help window and select Options from the pop-up menu. Click Tab to display the Tab dialog box, and select a font size option. When you close the dialog box, your help windows will display their text in the new font size.

Windows Minute

Wizards in Help

A wizard is a Windows 95 routine that guides you through a process of some kind. The wizard that executes when you first select the Find help dialog box builds a table of contents for the Find searches. You can build a small online help database (the default recommended choice) or a large online help database that will offer a more complete base of online help but will consume a tremendous amount of your disk space. Rarely will a Windows 95 user need to take up so much disk space as the maximized help database would take.

The reason that you may not see the wizard's screens is that someone else may have already run the wizard and built the help database for you.

Step 3: Review
The Start menu contains a Help command that displays a tabbed dialog box of online help information. The first time you use the online help system, Windows 95 will have to build a table of contents for the Find dialog box. If you are using Windows 95's help system for the first time, you'll probably have to follow the wizard's instructions to build the table of contents.

Task 7.2: Using the Contents Help Dialog Box

Step 1: Description
The Contents dialog box portion of the Start menu's Help command offers an overview of the Windows 95 environment. You may want to scan through the Contents dialog box, but you already know enough Windows 95 that much of the information will be repetitious for you.

JUST A MINUTE: Your version of the Contents dialog box may differ from the one shown in this task, depending on the date of your Windows 95 system.

Step 2: Action

1. The first help item in the Contents dialog box--Windows, the Web, and You--starts the Windows 95 Internet Explorer application, shown in Figure 7.5. If you've got Internet access, you can log into the Internet and read the online Windows 95 help on Microsoft's Web site. The site includes documentation not available at the time Microsoft created your Windows 95 CD-ROM. In addition, the site includes help with maximizing your use of Windows 95 and the Internet.

Figure 7.5. Learning about Windows 95 on Microsoft's Web site.

2. The second item in the Contents dialog box starts a 10-minute tour of Windows 95. Generally, you'll need a CD-ROM drive on your computer, and the Windows 95 distribution CD-ROM must be in the drive. When you click on the item labeled "Tour: Ten minutes to using Windows," the tour will begin, and after a brief pause, you will see the tour control screen, shown in Figure 7.6.

If you want to take a break and watch the Windows 95 tour, do so now. Click the Exit button to return to the Contents dialog box when you finish. If you installed the tour option when you installed Windows 95, you will not need the CD-ROM.

3. The remaining items on the Contents dialog box are marked with book icons. If you double-click an item next to a book, the book opens up and additional topics appear (like a folder that opens to show other documents and folders). Click the topic labeled How To, and you'll see a long list (scrollable with the vertical scroll bar to the right of the window) of topics from which you can choose.

Figure 7.6. Beginning to take a tour of Windows 95.

TIME SAVER: If you double-click on an open book icon, that topic (and the book) closes and the sub-topics disappear. The closed and open books work like the collapsed and expanded Explorer folders that display plus and minus signs to show their open and closed states. (Refer to Hour 6 for more details.)

4. Keep clicking on the topics (opening each book icon) until you see an icon next to a topic that contains a question mark sitting on a document. When you click on one of these document icons, Windows 95 will display a help screen like the one shown in Figure 7.7.

Figure 7.7. A Windows 95 help topic.

The small help topic dialog boxes stay on your screen even when you switch to other tasks. Therefore, if you want help on a topic such as moving a file, you can first display the help topic related to file moving, and then start Explorer. The help topic will remain on the screen while you use Explorer.

JUST A MINUTE: You can move and resize a help topic dialog box just as you can other kinds of windows.

When a help topic's dialog box contains green underlined text, that text is a cross-referenced help topic. You can click on the text to display a description of its topic. The help topic dialog box remains on the screen while you read the underlined text's cross-reference.

5. Most help topic dialog boxes contain buttons labeled Related Topics. When you click this button, Windows 95 displays a list of cross-referenced topics that, when you click on one of them, display a different dialog box containing a description of that related topic.

3.1 Step Up The help screens in Windows 3.1 generally consumed large windows. Often, when you maximized a help window you still could not read all the help text in the window at once.

Windows 95's help screens are much more manageable. Microsoft wrote the Windows 95 help screens to be smaller and more numerous than Windows 3.1's help screens. Therefore, when you display a help topic in Windows 95, that topic usually takes only a small window that measures, at most, a quarter of your screen. The small size of the help topic screens lets you keep that screen displayed over other programs without the help window getting in your way.

Step 3: Review
The Contents dialog box offers an overview of tasks that you might want to perform while working in Windows 95. When using the Contents dialog box, your goal (unless you want to take the Windows 95 tour) is to find the topic you want help with and display that topic's dialog box. From the topic dialog box you can look at cross-referenced help items and related topics.

Task 7.3: Traverse Help Topic Dialog Boxes

Step 1: Description
Rarely do you view one help topic dialog box at a time. Typically, you'll get help on a topic, and then decide that you want help on another topic. You'll use the help topic dialog box command buttons to move back and forth between other help dialog boxes.

Step 2: Action

1. Figure 7.8 shows a help dialog box with three command buttons at the top of the box labeled Help Topics, Back, and Options. (Small command buttons also appear on the help page itself so you can link to other help topics.)

Figure 7.8. Help topic dialog boxes appear with command buttons.

2. If you click the Help Topics command button, Windows 95 displays the Contents dialog box once again.

3. If you need to select several related help topics in succession, each topic will appear in its own dialog box. You can back up one topic at a time by clicking the Back command button.

4. The Options command button displays a menu of commands you can use to change the way you use the help system. If you select the Annotate command, Windows 95 displays a miniature text editor on which you can type notes that Windows 95 will attach to the help topic.
Subsequently, when you display that annotated help dialog box, you'll see a paper clip icon at the top which indicates that there is an annotated reference available when you want to read it. Click the paper clip to read, change, or delete the annotation.

5. The Copy command sends the dialog box's help text to the Windows 95 Clipboard. From there, you can later paste it into another area.

6. The Print Topic command prints the contents of the help dialog box. A Print dialog box will appear. Print dialog boxes are explained in Hour 15, "Increase Printing Power."

7. There are three font sizes: small, normal (the default), and large. You can change the font size by selecting Option | Font from the help topic dialog box. By making a help topic dialog box's font smaller, you can display more help in a smaller dialog box.

8. The next command on the Options menu determines whether or not the help menu stays on the screen on top of all other windows when you change to a different task. As mentioned earlier in this hour, the help dialog box always stays on the screen. You can change this default behavior by modifying the value of the Keep Help on Top command on the Options menu.

9. The last command on the Options menu changes the help topic dialog box colors to the Windows 95 system colors so that the information inside the help dialog boxes matches the colors of your regular Windows 95 windows. Ordinarily, the help topics display is a pale shade of yellow, simulating the yellow sticky notes you can attach to papers around the house or office.

10. If you've been following along and viewing the menu commands so far, close the help topic dialog box now. You can press Esc to close the dialog box quickly.

TIME SAVER: All of the Options menu commands are available if you right-click the mouse button over the help topic dialog box.

Step 3: Review
The command buttons at the top of the help topics contain extra power that lets you maneuver back and forth within the help system, as well as change the appearance of the help that you request.

Task 7.4: Using the Index Help Dialog Box

Step 1: Description
When you want Windows 95 to find a specific topic in the online help system, click the tabbed dialog box labeled Index. Windows 95 displays the Index dialog box. Here you can ask the online help system to search for topics for you. (You had to find your own topics when using the Contents help system.)

All three of the online help system's tabbed dialog boxes eventually display their helpful advice using the same set of small dialog boxes. The help method that you decide to use depends greatly on how you want to approach that topic. If you want to find help on a specific topic, you are better off looking for that topic in the Index or Find tabbed dialog box rather than the Contents dialog box.

JUST A MINUTE: The Index dialog box (described in this task) searches for help when you enter topics to search for. Windows 95 searches only help dialog box titles. If you want to search all of the help system's actual text, use the Find tabbed dialog box described in Task 7.5.

Step 2: Action

1. When you want Windows 95 to find help for you, display the Index dialog box and type the first few letters of the help topic that you wish to find. For this example, type mov. As you type mov in section 1, Windows 95 narrows the possible help topics matches in the list under section 2. Windows 95 displays all titles that begin with the letters mov, as shown in Figure 7.9.

Figure 7.9. Make Windows 95 look for a topic for you in the index of help titles.

2. Most of the time you will not need to finish typing the search phrase. As soon as you type two or three characters, Windows 95 narrows the list of help topics close to the one you want help with. If you want help with moving files and folders, the typed letters mov get the list in Index dialog box's lower section close to the topic entitled "moving files or folders".

3. If the topic you double-click over (in the lower section) appears in two or more help topic dialog boxes, Windows 95 displays yet another dialog box with every title that contains that topic. Select the topic you want help on, and Windows 95 displays the matching dialog box with the helpful information at your disposal. This is a good way to see several related topics at a glance.

Step 3: Review
The Index tabbed dialog box searches through all the help topic titles, looking for the subject you want to find. Whereas the Contents dialog box requires that you scan through all the help topics looking for the subject you want, the Index dialog box searches every help title for your word or phrase, and displays the resulting dialog boxes when you click over the listed topics.

Task 7.5: Using the Find Help Dialog Box

Step 1: Description
The Find tabbed dialog box searches through all the help text on your system, looking for a specific word or phrase that you type.

Step 2: Action

1. Click the Find tabbed help dialog box to display the dialog box on your screen.

2. At the prompt labeled "Type the word(s) that you want to find," type the complete word or phrase that you want the help system to search for. Basically, the Find dialog box's interface is similar to that of the Index search described in the previous task. Once you find a topic, you can double-click it and then display its dialog box.

3. Type the word move to see the topics update in the second and third scrolling listboxes in the dialog box. A large scrolling list of help topics that contain the letters move appears in the lower window, as shown in Figure 7.10.

Figure 7.10.Windows finds all topics in your help database that contain the word move.

Windows Minute

Narrowing the Search

The Find search dialog box finds every occurrence of your search word or phrase that resides in the help system's text. (Actually the amount of text searched depends on whether you built the index using a maximum database size or a minimum database size, the default, when you first displayed the help system.)

The Find dialog box is often not as accurate as the Index dialog box search, because Find searches a larger body of text than does the Index dialog box, described in the previous task. Therefore, you'll find that the word move appears in many different topics, as shown in the lower window's huge scrolling list of topics.

Since the word moved also contains the letters move, Windows 95 incorrectly lists all topics containing the letters moved as well as move. To get rid of the topics containing moved and movements, hold down the Ctrl key and click over the words moved and movement in the middle window to deselect those topics. When you deselect a selected topic, the highlight goes away and that topic is no longer selected. You've now ensured that only those topics that contain the word move appear in the Find dialog box of search topics.

4. Scroll through the list of choices in the bottom window and double-click any of them to display that topic's help dialog box. This dialog box works like the other help dialog boxes described earlier in this hour.

5. Notice the list of command buttons to the right of the Find dialog box. Clear erases all the help topics so you can look for another. The Options command button displays the Find Options dialog box, shown in Figure 7.11.

Figure 7.11. Describe how you want Windows 95 to find your help topics.

The Find Options dialog box describes how you want Windows 95 to find the information, based on your search word or phrase. You can request that Windows 95 search all the words in any order (the default) or at least one word that you type. If you click the first option, Windows 95 would only find help topics that contain the phrase my computer, if you were to enter that phrase as a search topic. If, however, you clicked the second option, Windows 95 would find all help topics that contain either the word my or the word computer.
There are additional options you can click as you become more acquainted with Windows 95. For now, press Esc or click Cancel to close the Find Options dialog box.

6. After you use the help system for a while, you may decide that you want more detail when hunting for specific items. You may find that the minimized database that the wizard set up when you first displayed the Find dialog box is not detailed enough. You can rebuild the help database by clicking the Rebuild command button and rerunning the help database build wizard once again, this time selecting the maximized database size. Do this now only if you have ample disk space (four or more megabytes free).

7. Click the Cancel command button to close the Find dialog box.

Step 3: Review
The Find dialog box searches across all your help topic dialog boxes. Whereas the Index dialog box searches strictly through the help topic titles, the Find dialog box searches the body of the help topic text, looking for any and all topics that contain your key search word or phrase.

Roving Help

Sometimes you'll be in the middle of a dialog box working inside Windows 95 when you spot a command button or a control that you do not understand. Look in the upper-right corner of the window for a question mark on a command button. If you find such a command button, you've found Windows 95's Roving Help command button and cursor (sometimes called Pop-up Help).

Whereas a help search on that dialog box would produce a description of the entire dialog box, the Roving Help lets you narrow the focus and request help on a specific item on the screen. Not all dialog boxes or screens inside Windows 95 contain the Roving Help feature, so look for the question mark command button, to the left of the window minimizing and resizing buttons, in the upper-right corner of whatever window you're working on.

Task 7.6: Using the Roving Help Feature

Step 1: Description
As long as a dialog box contains the command button with a question mark on it, you can request Roving Help for the items on your screen.

Step 2: Action

1. Display the help screen once again by selecting Help on the Start menu.

2. Click the Contents tabbed dialog box once again (refer to Figure 7.1). In the upper-right corner of the dialog box, you'll see the Roving Help command button and its question mark.

3. Suppose you forget what the large listbox of topics in the center of the screen is for. Click the question mark command button once, and the cursor changes to a question mark that follows the mouse cursor as you move the mouse.

4. Point the question mark mouse cursor to the list of topics in the middle of the screen and click the mouse button. Windows 95 displays a popup description box, shown in Figure 7.12, that describes the topic list and what you are to do with it.

5. Press Esc to get rid of the roving description box and return to the regular Contents screen.

6. There's another way to produce the Roving Help. Point the regular mouse cursor over the item. Right-click now over the list of topics in the middle of the Contents screen. Windows 95 displays a popup description box that contains a one line menu with the command What's This? in the menu.

7. Click on the What's This? command, and the same roving description box appears that's shown in Figure 7.12.

Figure 7.12. The Roving Help helps you when you point to a place on the screen.

JUST A MINUTE: The Roving Help is also known as context-sensitive help. Windows 95 looks at what you are currently doing when you request help and displays help that matches the context of your current actions.

Step 3: Review
The Roving Help feature of Windows 95 comes in handy if you forget what to do when displaying a dialog box or when working in a Windows 95 application. Click on the question mark icon and then click over the control that you want help with. Windows 95 then looks at the control that you clicked and displays helpful advice and a description for that control.

TIME SAVER: The F1 function key is the shortcut access key for the Roving Help. When displaying a dialog box, you often can press F1 to get a helpful description of what you can do next.

I Want My Welcome Screen Tips!

Do you still see a Welcome Screen when you start Windows 95? Hour 1, "What's Windows 95 All About?," described the Welcome Screen and explained how the Welcome Screen provides you with tips every time you start Windows 95. It also told you how to get rid of the Welcome Screen but not how to get the Welcome Screen back! The next task finally shows you how to get the Welcome Screen back again so it appears every time you start Windows 95.

Task 7.7: Adding the Welcome Screen to Windows 95 Start-Up

Step 1: Description
The reason you're learning how to add the Welcome Screen in this hour is that Windows 95 requires that you use the help system to add a Welcome Screen. In this instance, the help topic does not just describe helpful advice but actually does work for you.

Step 2: Action

1. Select the Help command from the Start menu.

2. Click the Index tab to display the Index dialog box (shown in Figure 7.2).

3. In the top input prompt, type Welcome. When you type Welcome, Windows 95 highlights the Welcome Screen, seen in the lower window.

4. Double-click the selected topic and you'll see the help topic dialog box shown in Figure 7.13.

Figure 7.13. This help topic dialog box displays the Welcome Screen.

5. Read through the dialog box text. Do you see the command button with the crooked arrow inside the text? Click over that command button. After a brief pause, Windows 95 displays a Welcome Screen with a helpful tip.

6. If you want to see the Welcome Screen every time you start Windows 95, be sure to check (by clicking) the option at the bottom of the screen labeled Show this Welcome Screen next time you start Windows.

7. You can now close the Welcome Screen. Each time you restart Windows 95, the Welcome Screen will appear.

8. Close the help topic dialog box.

Step 3: Review
The help system often does work for you. When you see a command button inside a help topic dialog box, you can often click that command button to accomplish a task. In this task, you learned how to add back the Welcome Screen every time you start Windows 95.

TIME SAVER: Some versions of Windows 95 provide a Tip Tour option on the Accessories menu. You can display the Welcome Screen and run the Windows 95 tour from this option. If you do not see this menu option, you'll have to initiate the Welcome Screen from the help system, as described in this task.

Summary

This hour showed you how to access the powerful help features of Windows 95. When you have a question about Windows 95, you can ask Windows 95 itself for help. There are several ways to access the helpful dialog boxes about a variety of topics. The most common method of getting detailed help is to select the Help command from the Start menu.

The Help command displays a help tabbed dialog box containing three different help search screens. The first, the Contents dialog box, displays an overview of Windows 95 in a book-like form that you read at your leisure. In addition, the Contents dialog box can start a ten-minute tour of Windows 95 if you have a CD-ROM with the Windows 95 system. (The tour requires heavy use of graphics and sound, so Windows 95 needs the storage capacity found on the CD.) You can also get on-line help if you have Internet access.

There are two ways to search for help using the help tabbed dialog boxes. If you select the Index dialog box, Windows 95 searches the help topic titles for the word or phrase that you need help with. If you display the Find dialog box, Windows 95 searches the help topics themselves for the word or phrase you're hunting for.

The roving context-sensitive help feature is nice because it lets you click over an item, such as a control in a dialog box, and Windows 95 displays help on that item. Usually, the Roving Help displays a description as well as advice on what you can do to make the control work for you.

Workshop

Term Review

context-sensitive help Refers to the capability of Windows 95 to look at what actions you are currently performing (the context) and display help that explains how to complete those actions.

cross-referenced help topic Green underlined text inside help dialog boxes that displays definitions when you click them.

deselect The process of reversing a selected item so that item is no longer selected. Usually when you deselect an item, the highlight around the item disappears.

online Information that is available interactively as you use Windows 95.

Roving Help Windows 95 lets you point to items on dialog boxes and click the window's question mark command button to get help about that item. You also can display this Roving Help by right-clicking over an item to see a description of that item and learn the commands you can perform.

wizard A step-by-step process that leads you through the execution of a Windows 95 task. Many Windows 95 programs, such as Microsoft Word for Windows, include specific wizards of their own.

Q&A

Q There are so many kinds of help available; which one should I use?
A The method of help that you access depends on the task you're trying to accomplish. Generally, there are several ways to get help on the same topic. If you want help on a procedure such as moving files, you can probably find related topics grouped together in the Contents dialog box. There, you will find topics, grouped by subject, which you can browse.
If you want to search the help system for all topics related to the one you want, such as changing icons on folders and documents, you will probably want to search the Index or Find dialog boxes. The Index dialog box searches topic titles for key words that you specify. The Find dialog box searches the text itself for the topic you want to find. The Find dialog box can locate more help topics than the Index dialog box can.
When you see a Windows 95 control or menu command that you do not understand, click the question mark icon in the upper-right corner, and then point and click over the item you want help with to get specific help about the screen.
Finally, if you cannot find help on a topic, especially if you want help with the Windows 95 Internet interface, check out Microsoft's Web site for help.

Q When would I want to build a maximized search database?
A If you have plenty of free disk space (at least 4MB), you can build a maximized search database so your Find dialog box searches across much more text than would otherwise be the case for minimized database builds.
Rarely will you search for topics that you cannot find easily with the smaller minimized database. Keep in mind that your searches will be more sluggish if you search across a maximized database of search topics, but the search will be more thorough. The index that the wizard builds is an index of key search words and phrases that Windows 95 searches when you subsequently select the Find dialog box.

Q Is Roving Help always available?
A Sadly, the Roving Help system is not always available. When you want to know how to perform a task, such as copying a file, you'll probably have to issue the Help command on the Start menu and search for your topic.
The Roving Help is a great tool to use when you want a description of a screen element. For example, when displaying a dialog box, you can display the Roving Help cursor to find out what commands the controls on the dialog box perform.