ACC97: Displaying Context-Sensitive Help for What'sThis Button

• Microsoft Office Developer Edition Tools 97
• Microsoft Access 97

SUMMARY

Advanced: Requires expert coding, interoperability, and multi-user 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:

        ARTICLE-ID:   Q177107
        TITLE     :   ODE97: How to Create Context-Sensitive Help for a MS
                      Access DB
   
        ARTICLE-ID:   Q175491
        TITLE     :   ODE97: Step-by-Step Example of Creating/Compiling a Help
                      File
   
        ARTICLE-ID:   Q163939
        TITLE     :   ODE97: Help Workshop Help Topics Contents
   
        ARTICLE-ID:   Q171958
        TITLE     :   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, precede the number with a minus sign (-).

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.