Help is not installed for Visual Studio ... but it is!

L

Libertarian

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Aug 26, 2003
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I just installed VS dot net 2003 Professional, and at the end of the process installed the MSDN library. There was an option to associate the help files with either 2002 (which I already had installed) or the new 2003. The latter was checked, and I left it alone.

When I opened a new project to check out the Dev environment, I typed a keyword, highlighted it, and pressed F1.

I was informed that help was not installed, and was told to install the MSDN library. Thinking I had goofed, I installed it again. Same problem. So I ran its repair feature. Still no good.

Long story short... I've installed, uninstalled, and reinstalled in several different configurations both from control panel and from the CD, but I still cannot access dynamic help.

When I open help from the menu, I get the same message BUT when I close the message box, the help opens anyway. It won't open, though, for F1.

Can anyone help me with this, please? Thanks.
 
Go to the Options under Tools menus. Environments -> Help. Make sure it set to the correct Help collection you want to. You can either use the internal with is MSDN 2003 or external which is whatever you want to.

Hope that help.
 
Thanks, Hughng, but that didn't work. It still tells me that help is not installed ,and then when I click OK it opens the help. Still can't F1. Again, though, thanks for responding.
 
Random thoughts? :D Oh, well...

For anyone interested, I finally figured out the problem. Buried deep within the bowels of the installation folders was a tiny Readme.htm. Buried within it was a brief sentence that said MSDN documentation prior to April 2003 would not integrate with VS 2003. My documentation was January. Once I updated it, the help began to work properly.
 
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