ODE97: How to Display Context-Sensitive Help for What'sThis Button

ID: Q177107

The information in this article applies to:

SUMMARY

Advanced: Requires expert coding, interoperability, and multiuser skills.

You can provide context-sensitive help for a What's This button on the Title bar of your form by using the WhatsThisButton property. When this property is set to True, the mouse pointer changes to the What's This state (arrow with a question mark) and the topic displayed is identified by the WhatsThisHelpID property of the control that the user clicks.

This article demonstrates how to display context-sensitive help for the WhatsThisHelp property by using Help to open a pop-up window provided by Windows 95 Help.


MORE INFORMATION

To display context-sensitive help that appears when a user clicks the What's This button and drops it on an object on your form or report, follow these steps:

  1. Create your Help topics in Microsoft Word or another word processor. For more information about creating your topic files in Microsoft Word, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:


    2. Q177116 ODE97: How to Create Context-Sensitive Help for a Microsoft Access Database
    Q175491 ODE97: Step-by-Step Example of Creating/Compiling a Help File
    Q163939 ODE97: Help Workshop Help Topics Contents
    Q171958 ODE97: Tips for Creating and Compiling Your Windows Help File
  2. Use Microsoft Help Workshop to compile your Help topics.


  3. Open the form that contains the objects for which you want to provide What's This help information.


  4. On the View menu, click Properties to display the form's properties box.


  5. In the Form Properties box, change the MinMaxButtons property to None and the WhatsThisButton property to Yes.


  6. In the HelpFile property, type the name for the Help file that contains your Help topics.

    NOTE: Copy this file to your Windows Help folder so that Microsoft Access will be able to find it.


  7. In the HelpContextID property, type the number that you linked the Help topic to in Microsoft Help Workshop.

    NOTE: To display the Help topic in a pop-up window, put a minus sign (-) before the number.


  8. Repeat step 7 for each control on the form that you want to link to a Help topic.


  9. Open the form in Form view, click the What's This button, and drag it to one of your controls.

    Note that the Help topic information appears.



REFERENCES

For more information about creating What's This help information, search the Help Index for "WhatsThisHelp property," or ask the Microsoft Access 97 Office Assistant.

Additional query words: ODE whatsthis whats inf 


Keywords          : kbdta OdeHlp 
Version           : WINDOWS:97
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbhowto

Last Reviewed: June 22, 1999