Re: What happened to context-sensitive Help in Word 2007?

Thank for the explanation, I understand where you are coming from
completely. :-)

I do know Help isn't quite finished yet, there's a LOT of content that is
still missing, and not too long ago Help accessed from the dialog boxes
resulted in what you found when you tried Help in the Create Source dialog
box so it does appear they are making progress.

As for finding commands, here are two resources you might find helpful. One
is an Interactive Command Reference Guide you can use to navigate to a
command in the old UI and it will show you where the command is found in the
new UI:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA100744321033.aspx

The second is a Ribbon mapping workbook for Word. It's an Excel workbook you
can download that contains the break out of each menu and command (the link
for the download is at the bottom of the page):
http://office.microsoft.com/client/helppreview.aspx?AssetID=HA100625841033&ns=WINWORD&lcid=1033

Note that both of these resources are available in Help under the What's New
section.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email cannot be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Coauthor of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

"GMc" <GMc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:F4ECB151-0633-49ED-A113-9AC9652665B5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Beth,
Thanks for the response. This is a long reply, so be forewarned.

You mention that ? works in the Font dialog box. When I am puzzled about
something in a dialog box, it's a specific option. I liked the prev. Word
help, in which all dialog box items were listed with info about ea. item.
The
? in the Font dialog now offers user actions, e.g. "Apply or remove
highlighting" (the first topic - you can't even apply highlighting from
the
Font dialog box, can you?).

The fourth item in that list is "Font," which in fact, offers a discussion
of the options in the Font dialog box. It starts with a discussion of
Latin
text options. Hmmm... is that the most prevalent kind of text out there?
(Guess it might be. ) But the Help is there - it's just that I, the user,
had
to hunt for it and within it. Not as it used to be.

Another example of yours is the Paragraph Help button. When I click that I
get two suggestions, "DRAFT: Adjust the spaces between lines or
paragraphs,"
and "Indent paragraphs." If I have a question about, say, what the Mirror
Indents does, I have to experiment. I'd like that list of
items/explanations
in the Help for the dialog box. (Mirror is not covered in the "Indent
paragraphs" topic, by the way.)

Now, as to the specific areas that prompted me to post this comment - it
took me (figuratively speaking) forever to find the Links dialog box in
Word
2007. Being stuck in the Prepare menu was not exactly intuitive. Also the
fact that items in the Prepare menu are not all visible (you must click
the
little down arrow) was not intuitive. But that is off topic. Once I found
it,
I had a question about the Lock option for linked items. Clicking ? took
me
to the "Browse Word Help" page in the Help. I also had a question about
making linked items relative, but... ( a search for "relative links" (no
quotes) in the Help yielded "Get featured links from Office Online" and
"Family holiday newsletter" as the first two help topics, followed by
three
topics on various "requests for genealogy records"...) (BTW, searching for
"relative links" (with quotes) yielded no results.)

I also had a question about the Mark Citation options. Pressing F1 (as
instructed by the Mark Citation tooltip) yielded the "Browse for Word
Help"
page. Guess it's a new feature and the Help's not finished, as you
mentioned.
But clicking ? in the Table of Authorities tab/dialog box (not a new
feature)
went to "Create a table of contents" topic, with no mention of
authorities.

These experiences while trying to get up to speed with this new interface,
caused an audible "gr-r-r-r" and thus my post.

--
GMc
Phoenix



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