XML Notepad 2007 breaks MS Access 2007 Help

Question

I tried scouring the web for help on this issue, but there are so many generic words in there, that I couldn't find much of anything that was relevant.

I have MS Office 2007 installed on Vista and later installed XML Notepad 2007 (also a Microsoft product). It seems that the MS Access help system is using some sort of XML format that XML Notepad took control of. Now, whenever I open help in Access, the little help window opens and instead of displaying content, attempts to download the content with XML Notepad. Grrr....

Is there a fix for this?

Answer 1

Do a repair on your Office installation. That, or remove XMl Notepad (it's not that good imho).

Answer 2

Okay, I found the answer and I'm a little embarrassed by it. In fact, my question was pretty much off the mark.

First, there is no involvement in this problem with XML Notepad 2007. It didn't hijack a file extension or make a registry entry or anything else like that. It's a great little program if you just want to open and examine an XML file. I use it kinda the same way I use notepad for text files. I just want a quick look and I don't need to weight or wait of a full ide at the moment.

What causes the help application to attempt to download a file called browse0.access.xml, is to be in offline mode. If you open up the table of contents, all the content is available except the home page which must require an internet connection.

To correct the issue, click the "offline" word in the lower right corner of the application and select "show content from Office Online". That should get it back to it's normal state.