How do you hyperlink to Word 2007 help pages?

Question

I want to hyperlink to a page within the Word 2007 Object Model Reference documentation, that ships with Word 2007. These are webpages that use the ms-help:// protocol that Firefox cannot understand.

So I wanted to specify the ms-help:// path of the help page as a command line argument to the viewer, CLVIEW.EXE.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\CLVIEW.EXE

Does anybody know the command line syntax for this?

Answer 1

You can view these documentation pages in Internet Explorer.

1. Open up your Word docs to the page you want.
2. Right click, Properties and copy the ms-help:// URL.
3. Paste this URL in IE, it should open up fine.
4. Use the command line syntax for IE to hyperlink to it.

Hope that helps, although clicking links in IE may not work properly.
Maybe CLVIEW.EXE has command line syntax that can do this directly.

Answer 2

CLVIEW.EXE doesn't support command line parameters to launch to a certain page. It's usually used to launch your own custom help file within the hosted Office application.

With Word 2007 there are some options available. They depend, let me repeat, they depend on whether your help is in online or offline mode.

1. If your intent is simply to get people to a specific Word help page and they have internet access, you can grab the URL from the help file in online mode. To do this, just right-click on the page you want the link, for example the Make the text bold page, to and click Properties. Then copy the URL (Address) which is: http://office.microsoft.com/client/helppreview.aspx?AssetID=HA100215341033&ns=WINWORD&lcid=1033. This will work just fine in FF (if you were in Offline mode, this same link would have been: ms-help://MS.WINWORD.12.1033/WINWORD/content/HA10021534.htm.)

2. If you are first sending them to Word, you can run an macro that brings up this topic. You grab the "Topic ID" from right-clicking on the page Make the text bold page (which, in this case is "HA10021534") and put that ID as the first parameter, like the below. NOTE: This should work in both online and offline mode.

   Sub DisplayHelpTopic()   
       Application.Assistance.ShowHelp "HA10021534", ""
   End Sub
   

3. For developer documentation with the solution for #2, if you are in offline mode, you need to set the scope to "DEV" (which will also work if you are in online mode). So for the subject Bibliography Object, the Topic ID is: HV10096617. If you are in online mode, you don't need the "DEV" scope. Code:

   Sub DisplayHelpTopic()
      Application.Assistance.ShowHelp "HV10096617", "DEV"
   End Sub