After you've reviewed how to create Help topics, you're ready to create the Help system for your application in Microsoft Excel. The following list shows the general steps to create a Help system. For specific information about each step, see your Help compiler documentation.
To create a Help system
1. After you create the custom commands, dialog boxes, and so on in Microsoft Excel, gather information for the corresponding custom Help topics.
2. Plan the Help system, deciding which items will need custom Help, what type of Help to provide, how to structure your Help files, and how to structure Help topics within each file.
3. Using your word processing program, write the text for the Help topics in the source files.
4. Enter all required control codes into the source files.
5. Save the source files in rich text format (RTF).
6. Create a project file for the build.
The build is the compiled Help file. Similarly, compiling Help is also called building Help in some documentation.
7. Compile the Help file.
8. Start Microsoft Excel, run your custom application, and try to display custom Help topics.
The next section explains how to display Help topics with Microsoft Excel.
The Help compiler requires certain settings in the Help project file and enough memory and disk space to compile the files you specify. If you want to make sure that everything is set correctly and that the Help compiler is ready to compile Help files, you can compile the example Help files described in the table on page 560.
To compile the example Help file
1. Create a temporary directory on your disk.
2. Switch to the temporary directory.
3. Copy all the files listed in the table on page 560 except EXAMPLE.HLP, to the temporary directory.
4. Start the Help Workshop (HCW.EXE) and open EXAMPLE.HPJ.
5. From the File menu, choose Compile and click the Compile button.
The compiler should create a new file, EXAMPLE.HLP, in the temporary directory.