Locating Information in the MSDN Library

There are several methods for finding the information you need, and numerous ways to combine methods so that your search is quick and efficient. The options discussed below are accessible in the navigation pane in the left part of the MSDN Library viewer.

To find a topic from the viewer's navigation pane

• Table of Contents  Click the Contents tab to browse through topics by title. The table of contents is an expandable list of everything that is available in the MSDN Library.
  
  
• Keyword Index  Click the Index tab to see a list of index entries, and then either type a word or scroll through the list. Similar to the index in a printed book, topics are often indexed under more than one entry.
  
  
• Full-Text Search  Click the Search tab to locate every occurrence of a word or phrase that may be contained in a topic. You can narrow your search by limiting it to a part of a collection or by defining subsets of topics that you specify.
  
  
• Favorites  Click the Favorites tab to create or access a list of favorite topics. You can easily mark favorite topics and return to them.

To view a topic found through any of these navigation methods, click the entry in the navigation pane to display the corresponding topic in the topic pane.

F1 lookups

To find a topic from your development environment, press the F1 key to display the MSDN Library browser. F1 works for keywords, API functions, error messages, and in dialog boxes to help you discover the purpose of a particular control.

To hide or show the navigation pane

The navigation pane is displayed by default in the MSDN Viewer. If you want to hide it, click View from the toolbar, then uncheck the Navigation Tabs option. To display the navigation pane, click View from the toolbar and check the Navigation Tabs option.

Note   If you close the browser with the navigation pane hidden, it will reopen that way.