Creating Your Own Help Topics

Many Office 2000 Help topics include links to more information on the Microsoft.com Web site. If you don’t want your users connecting to the Microsoft.com site from Office 2000 Help, you can disable the links by removing them from the topics in compressed HTML (CHM) files. You can also modify these CHM files to disable some of the links or redirect these links to your intranet site.

The CHM files containing Web links are updated periodically to reflect new information available on the Web. You can choose whether to download the new CHM files. If you disable some of the links in these files, and then your users update the files with a new version from the Web, then the links might become active again. If you remove the files altogether, your users are not prompted to download new files.

Each Office 2000 application has its own CHM file that contains all of the links to the Web.

For example, if you don’t want users to have access to the Microsoft.com site directly from Excel Help, you can delete the Xlweb9.chm file so that the links are broken. Or if you have an Excel Tips page on your internal Web site that you want users to connect to instead, you can modify the links in the Xlweb9.chm topics to point to your site.

 Caution    To ensure proper functionality, do not modify any other CHM files included with Office 2000. The CHM files containing the Web links are designed to have customizable Web links without affecting Office Help functionality.

See also

You use HTML Help Workshop to redirect or remove the links from the CHM files containing Web links. For more information about using HTML Help Workshop, see the Help system for HTML Help Workshop.