OFF: First Setup for Help Takes a Long Time to Run

• Microsoft Office 97 for Windows
• Microsoft Office for Windows 95, version 7.0
• Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows
• Microsoft Excel for Windows 95, version 7.0
• Microsoft PowerPoint 97 for Windows
• Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows 95, version 7.0
• Microsoft Word 97 for Windows
• Microsoft Word for Windows 95, version 7.0

SYMPTOMS

The first time you run Help in one of the Microsoft Office programs listed at the beginning of this article, it may take a long time before you can use the Help program to look up information.

CAUSE

This behavior occurs because the first time you run the .Hlp file for an program, the Setting Up Help dialog box appears (with the animated book and pen) while the Help file is being set up. Additionally, the first time you click the Find tab in Help, an additional amount of time is required to load the word list. This behavior is by design of Microsoft Help, and this time for setting up the file is only required the first time you run Help or click the Find button in Help.

WORKAROUND

To work around this behavior, note that in Microsoft Windows 95 you can switch from the Setting Up Help dialog box to another program and work in that program while Help is being set up. When Help is finished being set up, the Help program becomes the active program to let you know that it is finished.

To avoid additional time in setting up the Find feature, you can use the Index tab to locate information instead of the Find tab. The Index tab in a Windows 95 help file behaves the same as the Search button in a Windows 3.x help file.

MORE INFORMATION

When you run a Help file in Microsoft Windows 95, there may be up to four different tabs available in the Help dialog box: Contents, Index, Find, and Answer Wizard.

The Contents tab contains a list of help topics. The Index tab contains a box in which you can enter the first few letters of the word you're looking for, and then a list of corresponding index entries for that word that you can choose to display information for. Find enables you to search for specific words and phrases in help topics, instead of searching for information by category.

The first time you click the Find tab, a Loading Word List dialog box appears, followed by a Find Setup Wizard dialog box. Before you can use Find, Windows must first create a list (or database), that contains every word from your help file(s). You have the following options for creating this list:

   Minimize database size (recommended)
   Maximize search capabilities
   Customize search capabilities